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Hey all you wonderlings - did you know if you aren't sure what to pick for that oddling in your life, you can purchase a gift card from Etsy for them to use in my shop? Just add a link to my shop (etsy.com/shop/RebekahJoyPlett) in the notes and you're good to go! Add coupon code PLETTMAS for 10% off.

You can get Etsy gift cards here: https://www.etsy.com/giftcards?ref=gc-search-term

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"Degas' Creature"
2013
13.5" X 20"
Oil on board
Custom hand-painted frame
Ready to hang

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I didn't know when this was going to happen as life has been giving me New Things To Spend My Time Doing rather than some of the things I prefer to do. Such as create and make jewellery.

So.

You will find never-before-being-sold-because-I-wanted-to-keep-them pieces as well as some you may have never seen.

Get your Christmas shopping done, chatlings. You will feel all the better for it come December 23.

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Two years ago today my Grandmother passed away. It was an emotional beginning to an emotional weekend as I sat in the car beside my husband that Friday, pulled over beside a park with a lake that I had run around countless times, on our way to Ikea to pick up a few things before we moved into our very first house the next day, two days before we were to pick up our brand new puppy.

At Ikea, I could not - for the life of me - find a cooling rack. And be it the situation or the timing or the horrendous amount of people (all of whom I didn't know and didn't care about) I nearly lost my mind trying to find a damn cooling rack (and didn't, and never bothered to look for one again until a few days ago).

My mom called me to tell me what happened. We all knew it was coming, as you usually do with an elderly loved one. But it's like anything that you expect to happen, you prepare yourself and you wait and wait and then when it finally does happen, all the preparation or whatever you were doing before goes out the window with the bathwater, the bathtub, the baby and your ability not to cry in public.

March 8th is International Women's Day and I had written a blog post for my Grandmother. In it I said:

"So how do we know what makes a woman great? When she is gone and all those things she was, things she said and did become little holes in our day."

I still find those holes in each day, although now I don't look for them quite as often. Edna St. Vincent Millay once said:

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.” 

There is something said about time healing wounds (or whatever) but it doesn't. We get busy and have to think about other things, and although I guess the pain isn't so focused and sharp as it once was, that doesn't change that it is still pain.

All that to say although there are still little holes in my day, now I am seeing parts of my Grandmother in other things - such as my niece who sometimes says "Heeeey" like my Grandmother used to - and that fills in a little gap and keeps out the cold wind a bit.

In keeping with the idea of holes and sharpness of things, I leave you with this thought (a sad, yet comforting one):

"Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” — W.S. Merwin

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I will keep my words to a minimum today.

Get off the computer. As quickly as you can. Turn off your notifications, your Facebook, your Twitter (or Hootsuite or TweetDeck or whatever), log out of your email, turn off your phone, put your phone in the cupboard, hide the remote, put away the chips from last night, go outside, clear the leaves off the ground, plant some sunflowers, plant a squirrel's wayward acorn, put your hands in the dirt, water the dirt (even if there's nothing in there, there might be something in there that you don't know about), get your knees dirty, get your hands dirty, breathe in the outside air, don't listen to music, listen to the birds, the trees, stop thinking, stop thinking (seriously, stop it), stop looking for inspiration, it'll be there when it needs to be, stop forcing the moment, don't take any pictures, don't give this moment up to anyone else, this moment is yours, yours only, keep it, put it away inside you, save it for yourself, yourself only.

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My mom and I are trying to get into a local craft fair, so my creative brain cells are all focused in on the jewellery end of things right now. If we make it in, it's going to be hard to sell these pieces. I really love them and want to wear them all the time.

It's refreshing to let go of something that you love, so that someone else may love it.

But it isn't easy.

1. Business Card Prototype
2. Rain Cloud Fingernails
3. I Heart Combs 
4. Yellow Bracelet  
5. Yellow Daisy Ring 

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Beginning something can be really difficult. If you’ve ever sat and stared at a blank sketchbook, or an empty Word document, or a block of clay or any other sundry of things, you know what I’m talking about. 

It’s difficult because there is such pressure to start something that is GOOD. Do you know what I mean? Like I will feel that I have wasted my time if I spend a few hours on something and it doesn’t turn out. And if what I do doesn’t turn out, then nothing I do will turn out - obviously - and then why did I ever think that I could do this thing in the first place? Or anything? Then I go have a nap because this train of thought is leading me down a dark, dark tunnel.

This means we have to change our expectations of what we are doing. We are not sitting down to write a novel in a single night. We aren’t going to compose a symphony or complete a whole painting or anything like that. We are going to sit down (or stand, or roll around on the floor avoiding this moment) and play. 

Don’t you remember that creative time is playtime? Maurice Sendak said that he loved going into his drawing room and shutting the door because it was playtime. Like when you’re a kid and you just drew whatever the hell came to mind with NOTHING IN MIND. Or you just made stuff because making stuff is fun.

You have to let go of the thought that everything or anything you do needs to work out perfectly because then whatever you do will suffer the consequences for it. It will look abused and beaten down like the pickles at the top of the jar that are a bit misshapen and kind of soft instead of crunchy and punchy, like they should be.

So where do I start now that I know what I’m going to do is probably going to blow chunks?

Good use of a 90s-ism. You dive in headfirst. YES. Not feet first, and not with your eyes closed. You just start doing. When I’m making jewellery, I hover over the random crap I’ve amassed, like the megalomaniac I am, and start picking up things that jump out at me. Then I start putting things beside each other to see if they go well together. And if they work out, great! And if they don’t, I take them apart and use them for something else. I start again. Because continuing to go down a dead end road will always lead in a dead end.

Okay, but I need an idea EVENTUALLY, right?

Sure. I’ve found that I get at least (AT LEAST) 50% of my ideas WHILE I’m working on something. Whether it’s for the actual thing I’m working on, or for something else. Doing begets more doing. Ideas beget more ideas. The more begetting, the better. Kind of like in the Old Testament. Put your ideas together in a softly lit room with some nice pillows, close the door and see what emerges from it.

Now my ideas are breeding like rabbits! I have too many ideas!

I know, right? I have ideas A LOT because I’ve trained my brain to open wide the flood gates, like a brothel (ew). It doesn’t mean they’re all good, but they are varied and can be interesting and I like to keep them even if they are crap. I have an Idea Box that I use to keep all the notes I’ve scribbled down, or drawn out quickly while I’m at work, or doing whatever. I know my ideas are safe there because a) they won’t be forgotten and 2) I can let them simmer and come back to them later when I might have a new insight on something.

This is also important to do because it frees up more space for the brain to produce more ideas. If you just leave them in there, they coagulate like a scab and then NOTHING can get out and you have to pick past the old, crusty ideas to get to the new, fresh ones*.

To sum up the moral of the story for this post I will give you some tidy bullet points:

• Don’t expect perfection in the beginning. Or ever.
• Do expect to have fun or else why are you doing this?
• Don’t think too hard at first – just play and see what happens.
• Open yourself up to as many ideas as you can, and take good care of them – you don’t know what they’ll become.

Thanks for reading.
*Descriptive imagery for our visual learners.

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I love to paint. It's the first thing I mention whenever anyone asks what I do on my days off. As of this very moment, I haven't painted since September.

And every morning since September I wake up with the icy, guilty feeling of EGAD WHAT AM I DOING?

Back in September, when I was thinking about getting a job, I had an overpowering sense of Not Enough. I realized that the things I was creating didn't satisfy that pesky tremor in my gut saying: You can do better than this, you can do more (FYI - that was Frank talking).

I needed to evolve what I was doing and how I was doing it. I had to begin again.

Oh dear Lord, not again. (Yes, again)

For me, that required stepping back and rekindling the spark (at first I wrote "sparkle", which would be equally accurate).

That meant not making jewellery, not painting, not drawing, nothing.

I sat down with myself and Frank and the three of us began a list of what I wanted to change about my work to make it more fulfilling to me. How did I want to evolve? What work did I admire and want to strive towards with my skills? Where have I failed in the past and how would I achieve those goals in the future?

It was time to set the bar higher.

You have to understand that the small event of just sitting down and writing whatever I wanted to do was freeing. It was only for myself to see and to know. I recommend doing this.

While I've been letting my work simmer, I've let my creative mind go somewhere else completely. I joined up with the fine folks at Three6V.com and began creating in a way I hadn't done in a long time. I began making little things for myself; a recipe book, a mounted doll's head, and this is when I started to let myself dive back into jewellery that I wanted to wear, which is on my list of How To Evolve So As To Not De-Evolve (un-evolve?)

Another thing that has helped me find my direction was a rejection I received from a gallery. The most important part of this is that they told me why they didn't accept my work, and it was exactly on par with what I had written down for evolving my painting skills.

So I guess the moral of the story for Part I is: figure out what it is that you want to be doing and how you want it to be done. That's why I recommend sitting down with yourself and outlining what you want to be, what you want to do and how you want to do it. Push yourself to do that thing better, because it deserves to be better.

And if in six months you no longer want to be doing that thing, then change it. Allow yourself to change. Your creativity and ideas SHOULD constantly be evolving, so don't feel bad if all of a sudden you don't like something you did a couple months ago. It would be a failure to look at something you did forever ago and think that THAT is still your best work.

It's always time to change. It's just a matter of the doing.

Thanks for reading.

 

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Back in October 2012 I got a job. A real job. The kind with a commute and 30 minute lunches and responsibilities that had nothing to do with me other than that I had to make sure they were done.

I pulled back from blogging, Facebook, Twitter and emails more so out of necessity than anything. I still wanted to get my own work done at home when I wasn't at work.

The biggest difference for me is that my financial dependency no longer rains all over my personal work, but is cleanly kept in a perfectly squared little box at my job. Also, that my time management has changed drastically.

I had some astounding (and some less momentous, but still important) thoughts and realizations that I want to talk about. Because I think it's important. And I think it will help other people with their Creativity Issues (you know what I mean). And it will help me.

I'm calling this series of blog posts The World In Which We Create because the world in which we create incorporates the convoluted and foggy plain of our minds, the tangible and confusing world around us as well as the infinitely informative and destructively distracting World Wide Web. Etc, etc, etc.

Reading this series probably won't make you more creative, but hopefully it will help you make fewer excuses to avoid your creativity. Your Creativity That You Have That Is Yours.

I'm going to end the prelude on this note: you're allowed to change. You're allowed to begin again. And again. And again. The other day I said on Twitter: you have to keep finding the fire. It will ignite and disappear just as quickly. Don't sit in the dark, go to where the fire is.

So we'll see where this takes us.

Thanks for tagging along.

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I'm waiting on some orders to come in so I have some half-finished pieces that I didn't post about, like a Trilobite locket (I KNOW! I want one too), and a giant sunburst locket headpiece, and a cloud pin, etc. But here is what I DID accomplish.

1. Matryoshka Dolls
2. Big Red Balls
3. Horse Bridle Inspired Headpiece 
4. Rain Cloud Pin 

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I'm finding the most difficult part of this creativity challenge is not so much the being creative part but POSTING about it every day.

I do something creative every day but I don't always post about it. But it still counts, right?

Here is what I've been up to:

1. Book Shelves Made of Books
2. Rusty Junk Pieces - Art Deco-inspired Hair Comb 3
3. Rusty Junk Pieces - Silver Bracelet Hand Jewellery
4. Mounted Doll Head  
5. Watch Strap Hand Beaded Dried Flower Pendant Necklace

What you don't see here is the banana bread with blueberries that I made, the sketches I did for a new business card, or the bones of the folded crane chandelier. 

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I don't know what I'll be doing this weekend so the round-up is going to be early.

Next week I hope to get back to some of the bigger projects that I started at the beginning of this adventure.

1. Rusty Junk Pieces - Earrings
2. Spanish Colonial Coffee Table
3. Rusty Junk Pieces - Art Deco-inspired Hair Comb
4. Rusty Junk Pieces - Bracelet
5. Fire Engine Red Nail Polish   

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I missed last week, I know, I'm terrible. Here's what I've been up to (for the days I missed, I was reading or sleeping, which is kind of half creative).

1. Rusty Junk Pieces - Crystal Necklace
2. Office Space of Creativity
3. Recycled Recipe Book
4. Hodge Podge
5. Growlin'tine Card #1
6. Gold Nails
7. Alice in Wonderland Tea Party Bird Feeder
8. Doll Vase 

Better luck next week.       

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My first week doing the creativity challenge at three6v.com has been great. I mean, I'm doing better than I thought I would. I figured I'd do something creative the first couple days and then sort of get tired and then cheat a little and then forget about it altogether until next year.

But really it's inspired me a great deal to work on these projects and to see what other people are coming up with. It's given me a new energy towards my work.

So here are the projects I did this past week:

1. Bare Wood Floor Painting Extravaganza

2.  Recycled Journal/Sketchbook - Part 1

3. Origami Chandelier - Part 1

4. Roller Derby Water Bottle Sticker

5. Birds on a Wire - Finger Nail Art

6. Rusty Junk Pieces - Jewellery Set   

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Good new year to you all.

A couple years ago I tried to be creative EVERY DAY for a whole year and I made it through like, parts of a couple weeks, I think? So this year my friend Bree announced she'd be joining up with the three6v group and doing a creative experiment for this year.

I obviously had to join in.

My creative blurbs will be posted on the website here, and I will doing a weekly round-up maybe every Saturday or Sunday of what I have done that week.

I also have a lot of creative ideas that I never get around to, so I think I will start posting some of those on here as well. Then maybe you guys can peer-pressure me into actually doing some of the better ideas and I can get some things created, yeah?

Good luck to you all in this lucky year of 2013!

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My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
 She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
 The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
 But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

— Robert Frost

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1. Someone liking or not liking your work is less important than you liking or not liking your work. (It sounds obvious but just try it some time)
2. Tea is not a substitute for a meal. A fed brain thinks more clearly.
3. Be aware that inspiration can be anywhere. Let me repeat that: anywhere.
4. The only opinion that should be considered is an honest opinion (and even those must be taken with a grain of salt).
5. Never befriend a liar.
6. Taking a break is not admitting defeat.
7. Try to not look at another artist’s work while working.
8. Not everything you draw will be gold or even good. But don’t ignore the potential of a great idea just because you’ve drawn it poorly the first time.
9. Do not start more projects than you can finish. It is unfair to the projects.
10. Do not take on a project just because you need the money. Get a job if you need money. Your creativity is sacred and should not be squandered on passionless pieces.
11. Being an outsider is the best way to observe other people’s lives without becoming caught up in the nasty bits. Also, a truly understanding friend is irreplaceable (and rare).
12. You’re allowed to change.

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I love the new technology in libraries these days: I love that I can slide my returned book onto a conveyor belt, it will scan it and log it back into the system and tell me my book is returned without me having to worry if it will be snatched off the counter while waiting to be attended or utterly lost for whatever reason. I love that I can collect all my books off the shelves and then scan them in myself without having to wait in a long line for someone else to do it for me. I love that I can search books from other libraries in my district and have them sent to my library where I can pick them up at my convenience.

However.

My local library, with all its new technologies and conveniences does not have a lot of books. In fact, it is missing quite a few books including (but not limited to) classics such as The Count of Monte Cristo. It's rare that I can walk into my local library with a book on my mind and find it there. So I must use my computer to locate it in another library and have it sent to me. Which is fine. But my district is also not known for its wealth of books.

This is distressing to me.

I use to spend hours — HOURS — in the library as a young adult searching for and FINDING the books I was after. I slowly walked up and down the aisles with my finger gliding along the spines of those glossy creatures until I found the one I was looking for.

And the miracle of the library is not only finding the book you wanted, but looking at the surrounding books, or perhaps the books you glanced over on your way to your treasure and finding something you never considered reading before, or even ever heard of.

I don't need to go into the indulgent aroma of the stacks of books accumulated over time, or the deadening silence that allows your thoughts to shout, scream and be heard. We all know we love this about libraries.

As a person who loves books — not only loves them, but depends on them in a strange sort of escapist dreamy way — I feel let down by my city and our district for having such a limited amount of books on hand. The library is a place that I like to go to release my thoughts and relax, in a way. The library is all the worlds ever thought up that can take us away from this present one just for a little bit.

If libraries ever become extinct, I don't know what I'll do.

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Hello my ferocious monsters! I've just put up some new items for sale in my Etsy Shop. Go and have a look! (click on the images to be whisked away to their page on Etsy).

braaaaaains!

There are some spooky items for you Halloween fiends! Zombies unite!

Do stay awhile in my garden, with this bracelet!

My lovely "Let Me Into Your Garden" piece is making a reappearance! 

Don't let the zombies bite!

During this whole month of October I'm celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness Month by donating 50% of the profits from my shop to Pin-ups Against Cancer.

A little love for a little owl

So by purchasing anything in my shop you are A) helping out a GREAT cause! 2) Supporting an emerging artist and C) Getting your Christmas shopping done early!

Can you guess which classic 1930s novel this is from?

Don't miss out on this great event all month long. I'm up to almost $250 raised for the cause. Thanks to you all!

Ever heard of "chain draping"?

Why am I doing this? Read how cancer has been a part of my life here.

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Come check me out in the Robots & Monsters show at the Ayden Gallery on October 12. This will be the first time one of my monster girls will be shown in public. Also, it will be the first time one of my sci-fi Masked Menaces will be exhibited as well.

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Like when he found a toothbrush identical to his sitting beside a jug of bleach.

Or when I dropped the camera in the ocean.

Or about the cup of dirt I keep in my studio.

Or when I'm hunched over the newspaper cutting out obituaries.

Or even that time we had this conversation:

Him: The dog left you a present this morning
Me: She didn't chew my book, did she?
Him: No, your phone.
Me: Oh, good.

It's probably for the best.

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For those of you who aren't friends with me on Facebook (or who haven't discovered my fan page [or even Twitter, though I don't tweet a lot]), here is what I've been up to this weekend.

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