I hit a couple of triggers tonight that flipped us from content and coping to wildly distressed in a heartbeat. My brain is full of screaming pain. This is my new wrist poem:
It reads: “Some nights, it has to be okay to be broken… to be without hope… not to believe…”
I’ve been busy painting at zoos and working on my paint kit and website lately. The business is going well, particularly considering that winter is the quiet time for this kind of work. I think I’m going to be very busy with it this summer! There’s a 2 days a week job that I’ve been keeping an eye on for ages and now I have to decide whether to go for it or not… it’s a hard call! The job is working as the women’s worker supporting newly identifying GLBTIQ people… pretty much my dream job… but I’m very busy also getting a new very exciting small business off the ground, and I have a lot of art projects I’m keen to sink my teeth into soon. Hrummmmm.
I keep thinking about Neil Gaimon’s advice in an awesome speech he gave (here) about how to reach your dreams – to treat your big dream (like, say, I want to be a professional artist) as a mountain you’re heading towards. Every time you have to make a career or life decision, you ask yourself if the choice in front of you is taking you closer towards, or further away from, your mountain. I think one of my challenges is that I currently have about 20 mountains… which is awesome… but does make decisions like this difficult.
So, thinking for now, and working on the People Painting business. I’ve revamped the website, updated photos, rewritten my rates information page, and added a whole new page for party theme ideas! I’m pretty damn proud of myself and have a lot more ideas buzzing about my brain. Actually I’ve been either buzzing or asleep lately, somewhere between exuberant and slightly manic. It’s fun but also a little wearing.
I painted at the Adelaide Zoo the other day, with a price set for me of $3.50 per face. That’s very low, and meant I needed to create a host of simpler designs that could be painted more quickly. I was a bit stressed about it but also kind of enjoyed the challenge. I wound up painting the most amazing collection of neon rainbow animals… the panda in particular looked incredible!
It’s a beautiful day out there… and I have so much admin and so many errands to run. But I’ve had only one hours’ sleep and I’m fading fast, so I think I’m going to leave it all behind and go and hide out in bed. I’ll leave with one last photo of kitteny goodness. 🙂
Oh, all right, a bunch of photos then… Tonks is going great. His sister, who has been named Kiki, comes over for a visit regularly and they have a great time chasing each other around the unit. Here he is last night, exploring the awesome new cat tree Rose has let me borrow. 🙂 Zoe is doing much better now I’ve been able to get her to the dog park for a good run a couple of times. She’s still restless but it’s taken the edge off. Sarsaparilla is fighting every cat in the neighbourhood and constantly coming home wounded. I’m desperate to put together a cat run to keep him in. He hates being trapped in the house and cries at the door for hours, and then seriously gets destructive. Hopefully I can pull that off for him soon.
Whoooooooo! I just went and bought a desk lamp and a UV bulb… this is the painting I did earlier shown under black light!
Even the ‘pale pastel’ painting lights up!
Standard white does not, but you can see the blue dots among the flowers catching the light.
Here it is; my new black light desk lamp for painting at parties! I’m so excited!!
There’s a real risk with a small business like this one, of funneling all your profits into more and more products and gismos, so I’ve been very restrained and only allowed myself standard bright paints and the metallic/pearls… Then I upgraded my brushes to quality ones. Then bought a new kit to put everything in as the old cardboard file box was pretty hopeless. Then upgraded my paints to better quality ones… added only gold silver and crystal glitters… and just the rainbow one stroke and split cake… then the rainbow in pearl… then three more one strokes from workshops… you see the progression! I’ve now got 6 powder glitters and 4 gel glitters, (this is still the highly restrained expansion you understand!) skin safe glue, googly eyes, gemstones in a variety of colours and sizes from 4mm – 8 mm, and UV paints, ointment for glittery lips, stencils for special designs, personalised business Tshirts, a velvet dress for fairy parties, and my own picture booklets of photos of my custom designs. Lordy, lordy. But how WONDERFUL to be this excited about my work! 🙂
It doesn’t have to be so intense – you can also apply it for a more pastel effect… although let me tell you it doesn’t photograph HALF as bright as it is in real life… amazing colours!
Here’s the culprit! A neon rainbow split cake. This (for those who care) is a DFX rather than my usually preferred TAG, for the simple reason that it is a proper six colour rainbow in the correct order – which is oddly rare in the world of facepainting split cakes. Weird!
And I ordered some DFX white too, on the basis of web chatter that it held a white line better than TAG… I can’t tell the difference… I might try Wolfe next and see if that’s any better. If not – must need some work on my technique.
So yes, once again I’m covered in paint and feeling quite relieved that my dentist cancelled my appointment this afternoon!
Cool hey 🙂 and I took Zoe to the first dog park either of us have ever been to… It was nerve wracking but wonderful and she had a great time. I’m hoping to go back often. Rose helped me get out of the house and down to some markets this morning. It was good to get out into the sunshine, felt a little weird and surreal. I’m sort of ok and sort of wildly fragile at the moment. I cooked tea last night, a type of cabbage soup, for Rose who found herself working an 11 hour shift when things fell through at work. Then I made her life easier by becoming genuinely hysterical about being so sick at the moment. After pain relief, the distress settles. It’s a pattern we’re seeing a lot. So it was nice to plod about the markets instead. I bought a warm winter jumper with some face painting money, and a scoop of ice cream. All in all it hasn’t been a bad day. Yesterday was hard. I had a semi public meltdown, spent most of it sobbing in bed before a friend collected me and took me to group for the evening. In my pj’s. Work on the DI had ground to a halt this year as I’ve been so drowned. I’ve been hoping to get better then take on the task of restructuring how it works and either cutting back my responsibilities, or breaking up my role and parceling bits of it out to other people. No such luck, I’m going to fall apart first. I’m not making it out to college, I’ve closed off my other groups, withdrawn from a lot of my volunteer work, at the moment I’m down to the face and body painting business, running Bridges, and trying to keep my head above water. The cracks are showing and the boat is going down. So today I drew attention to the little green man behind the curtain and said help I’m not making it. People have swung into action to take various important DI roles and tasks off my shoulders or support me in carrying the load. Thank god for that.
So by the end of the evening I could breathe again. I’m off to the county today to paint faces at a hot air balloon festival, which I’m looking forward to. Particularly as Rose is kindly coming with me to help out with the driving. So I sat up all night working on my paint kit. A while ago I had the idea to stripe one side of my hand made split cakes so I have a bigger range of rainbow splits for painting, but still big patches of solid single colour paint for sponge work. So this morning I converted all my solid colours into multi split cakes. It was very calming and peaceful. I’ve been researching skin inks and free form glitter tattoos and other temporary body modifications lately and getting very excited about them. I’m booked into an upcoming workshop on creating temporary tattoos on skin, unlike face paint these are made with inks that stain the skin for a few days or up to 2 weeks! I am bursting with ideas and excitement, there’s so much more scope for artistry with these tools and I’m really looking forward to the workshop. It’s nice to have something on my life to focus on that feels peaceful and uncomplicated.
A new ink painting, something whimsical that made me smile:
So I was almost ready to give up on the class. It’s an hours drive away and I was worried about how sick and stressed I was feeling. Rose encouraged me to keep it and talked to me on the phone about her day on the drive up (using handsfree) to keep me company. I’m so glad I went. I learned so much! Not just the flowers we were being taught, but asking questions about other techniques that had confused me and so on. I also got a lot of encouragement for my business, which is wonderful because I’d had a few disappointing phone calls lately and my confidence has been low. You can check out my wonderful flowers over at my website www.sarahkreece.com.au here’s a sneak peak: 
I also managed to get out of the store without lightening my purse too badly, which is a minor miracle. But I did bring home some little treats for my kit, and I’m relieved to be feeling so excited about painting again. It was a big boost to master the new designs quickly and get a thumbs up about my business practices from someone much more experienced in the industry.
After the couple of days I’ve had, it feels like someone has lifted a huge boulder off me, my heart is much lighter and even chirping into song.
It has the tentative title of The Artist, and is about self care and healing. Which brings me to the online chaos… I have a number of different life/business areas that need an online presence, and this blog is no longer a good venue to host all of them. However, I’m also unhappy with very long urls such as sarahkreece.wordpress.com going on postcards and T-Shirts. So I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research and finally today I’ve set things up so that I have two sites mapped to their own domains. My facepainting site is now located at sarahkreece.com.au, and I’ve created a hub for all my online activities at sarahkreece.com, which is small and tidy to fit onto a business card. Eventually, that hub site will also link to an online portfolio of my art work, and a separate website for my mental health consultant work. Well, that’s the plan anyway!
Today I’ve just ordered a new set of business cards, a new set of People Painting postcards, 2 T-Shirts (one for me and one for Rose), and a magnet for the door of my car. Here’s some pretty pictures of the final designs I’m hoping to have here in a fortnight. 🙂 (the watermarks are only on the photos, not the actual designs)
The biggest call I had to make was about putting a business number on things – I’m phone phobic when stressed at the best of times, and also worried about dealing with stressful calls through my mental health work or this blog. I find it much easier to manage emails than calls in that respect. However, I’m aware that a business number is a basic requirement so I’m going to test it out and see how it works. Hopefully I find it all manageable.
It’s a steep learning curve but I was ill the other day so stayed home and spent it in my studio. I’m working on a new tree spirit – a weeping willow. This is the progress so far:
Almost finished our first stop motion project for digital media class. This has over 500 still images, 2 transitions, and was edited in Premiere by complete novices. 🙂
Love this class 🙂
I really enjoyed this. I love sculpting these little items, it’s so fiddly and interesting. The paintwork is madly fiddly too but I really enjoy it.
 |
| Detail – face |
 |
| Detail – shirt and buttons |
 |
| Detail – shoes |
So, filming for the stop motion animation begins on Thursday, editing is on Sunday, and hopefully by Monday we’re ready to assemble it into a short film.
See dogboy before he was painted here.
See dogboy in our stopmotion animation here!
And here’s the little taps for the sink and a door handle:
My second one had to be a self portrait using text, created in Photoshop. This was a much steeper learning curve for me. I abandoned one project part way through because it was driving me crazy and looked like crap. The second one I worked out a lot of faster ways to do things and I’m very happy with it. 🙂
Now I’m exhausted and off to bed.
Enter my trusty new leather belt, purchased at the Garden of Unearthly Delights recently!
It worked a treat! It was all a lot easier than I thought it would be. My blackboard advertised my prices so everyone knew what they were getting in to up front. I was busy all morning and I’m very happy with the set up. Now I can investigate some local markets and maybe find myself some regular spots to work. Hurrah!
I also think this is the first market where I have been happy with everything I painted 🙂 Lots of compliments about my work! One little lad asked for his whole leg up to the knee to be wreathed in flames, he was over the moon at the result. I love the kids imagination!
My gorgeous girlfriend Rose has been invaluable, coming along early on a Saturday morning to help me set up, pack up, spruking me to passersby who didn’t see my postcard or realise I can paint at birthdays, and making sure I stop for a drink or a nibble occasionally. She’s napping on my couch at the moment. ❤ We celebrated with chocolate on the way home. 🙂
It’s a big weekend! A friend of mine is going to shave for the Leukaemia Foundation’s World’s Greatest Shave on Sunday, her name is Riki and she’s awesome. She’s been growing her hair since 2011 and it’s very long and thick. She’s taking it all off on Sunday and would love any support. You can donate here.
So, my digital media class at college has thrown me into the world of gifs! I knew nothing about this area until last week. This is one of my first gifs, made this evening on my phone. For those of you not in the know, a gif is basically a tiny video that loops, and is a very small file that can be quickly loaded and hosted in many places on the net. You won’t see them on Facebook but they’re pretty common everywhere else. A couple of our assignments involve creating gifs this term.
This particular one was created using an app, photographing the shadow of my hand in various poses, and then joining those photos to create a very short film that endlessly repeats itself.
Our journal for this class is online, documenting our work, research, and idea development on a tumblr account. I’ve never had one of those either. Now I do, so if for some reason you’re interested in gifs or animation or tumblr or spending an evening in your pj’s eating cookie dough and browsing the net, you can have a look at my developing journal and truly jaw dropping efforts in gif creation over at sarahsdigimedia.tumblr.com 🙂
The People Painting business is coming along in leaps and bounds. I’ve started a blog on that website where I’ll now be posting my pictures and information about upcoming events. Check it out at sarahkreece.wordpress.com. The training on one-stroke techniques was really interesting and I’ll be posting pictures about that soon there too.
The microbusiness cert is interesting and relevant and starts painfully early in the morning which is killing my sleep routines. Nonetheless, very much worth it and thrilling to access it free on the Skills for All scheme.
College is jaw droppingly awesome and my little heart is singing to be back again. I hit major issues with the timetable and wound up shifting a class and dropping one class. I just can’t pull off three classes and the microbusiness at the same time. As it is, tomorrow I will start study at 9:30am with the Microbusiness course, work through to 4:30pm, run off to college to start my Digital Media class at 5pm, and finish up for the day at 8:30pm. So I’m going to be moving very slowly and being very careful with my sleep and energy this week.
The classes I’m taking are Digital Media and Art History. Digital Media is tempting me tremendously as a possible major, the opportunities to play and create are awesome! I’m in love with it all. I also adore handing in a journal that is actually a Tumblr account… go and join me there at sarahsdigimedia if you’re interested.
I’ve also been working hard on new resources for the DI… and the new website is starting to look smart. Have a look at dissociativeinitiative.wordpress.com. This year one of my major goals is turning Bridges into a day/evening group on alternating weeks – we have a number of people keen to participate in the group who have found that working 9-5 excludes them. We are in talks at the moment and things are looking very promising to be able to make this change very soon!
Stay tuned! 🙂
I am so happy with it! I have learning a lot the past few days about domain names and hosting and how wordpress and blogger work in more depth. I’ve purchased my own domain name sarahkreece.com and will be mapping my online network of sites to it once I’ve decided on the best setup. Now that my adobe suite is installed again I have also begun to explore the software and so far I’m picking it all up really fast and feeling very excited about what I’m going to be able to make with it.
I have had such a bumpy start to this year, sickness and feeling stuck and depressed have really knocked me around. For the moment at least I seem to have become unstuck and the juices are flowing again. I’ve had a fantastic weekend where I’ve felt like I’ve been on holidays and yet somehow I’ve also got the dishes done and mopped the floors and cooked meals and taken Zoe to the beach… A break from the sickness and distress is so damn sweet I am just breathing it all in, deep breaths, deep breaths.
Today college starts up again and I cannot wait! Digital media class, here I come. 🙂
Things are moving on the business front! I am currently studying a Cert 3 in Microbusiness Operations through Learning Potential International as part of the Skills for All program. This course has been designed to help people with some kind of disability to turn a hobby into a home business. I’m learning a lot, making some new friends, and spending a lot of hours thinking and planning my business. There are some areas (paperwork, record keeping, and suchlike) that I’m really struggling with, and others (marketing, social media, customer relations) that I feel a lot more comfortable with and inspired about! We’ve just finished three full days with early mornings and a bit of warm weather and today I am a bit trashed. The next block of classes isn’t for a fortnight but it will be interesting as I’ll also be starting my college classes for the B. Visual Arts and Design by then too, and this term I’m trialing doing three classes at once which is the most I have ever tried to do since I first became really sick back in 2003. I’m nervous and excited and spending my days off mostly in bed feeling like my skull is shrinking and crushing my brain, and watching episodes of Would I lie to you? on Youtube.
I have two People Painting events booked, I’ve made some great contacts in the local face painting industry, have found an inexpensive class to upskill my one-stroke techniques (I’m not expecting you all to follow that, it’s a body painting thingamy), and I’m also booked in to deliver a (voluntary) presentation about Dissociation and DID to a local group of mental health staff. This all makes me very happy.
On the scary front, I’m just starting a trial of not taking one of the meds I’ve been on for the past ten years, so that my doctor and I can assess how it’s been affecting me and how my illness has progressed in that time. This is rather nerve wracking and may turn out to be wonderful and clear up frustrating side effects, or may leave me curled up in bed crippled with pain. Only one way to find out!
I am hoping to find a Cert IV Training and Assessing course through the Skills for All program later this year to add to my skills base/resume as a Mental Health Peer Worker and Consultant. I’m also keeping my ear to the ground about a proposal by Shine SA to develop a new course about healthy sex/uality specifically for people with a mental illness that sounds very exciting.
The rest of the time, sleep and study are high on the agenda. Looking forward to autumn and cooler weather, and hoping to find a new and better home for my lovely dog Zoe very soon.
Using a small sponge and keeping it fairly dry, the stencils come up like this on the skin:
It takes a little practice to get the paint quantity correct – too much and you smudge the design, too little and you don’t transfer any paint. A smaller sponge helps with controlling exactly where the paint goes too. Here’s both stencils used over a solid colour base:
The floral stencil was trickier to master due to such tiny cut outs, but the effect is superb! I would not want to be whipping this out for very busy parties or markets, it does take time to let the underpaint dry, and hold the stencil still particularly around curves on the body. If I have time however, this makes for excellent lace, wings, and gives a velvet brocade effect if painted over a lighter or darker tone of the same colour (light/dark pink for example).
I’m looking forward to playing more with them, it’s been a fun day of painting today and I’m feeling inspired and excited!
Sarah K Reece 