Wrist Poem - Broken

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..."

Glitter Tattoos

I've been experimenting with the application of temporary glitter tattoos and today I bought my first professional quantity for public use. In fact, I'll have them available at the Adelaide Zoo today where I'm booked to paint. I'm pretty excited and a little bit nervous... :) I'm expecting to be able to expand my range in the near future to metallic temporary tattoos, henna style, imitation tattoos painted with skin safe ink, and art transfers I've designed... it's a pretty exciting time with the business at the moment and I'm fortunate to have some great opportunities and good support from people around me. If you'd like to see more of my latest designs, come and check out my People Painting facebook page here. Or, come along to Adelaide Zoo today!

Face paint and kittens

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.

UV Paints under black light!

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! :)

UV Neon face paints!

Whoo hoo! Today a new item arrived for my kit... This weekend I have a party that will wind up in a nightclub, so I ordered these awesome neon UV reactive face paints! They glow under blacklight. 

 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!

Gemstones, glitter, and more fun than my carpet can really handle...

New face/body painting supplies! Today was awesome, I painted at a friend's birthday party then went and bought new supplies. My house is currently covered in glitter. COVERED. I have new glitter. I have gorgeous gems to stick on with skin safe glue. I have little googly eyes in different sizes for different critters. I have some new lovely paint colours such as lilac. Did I mention the glitter?

I've put a stripe of clear nail polish around the lids on the glitter and dredged them in the relevant colour to make it easier to pick out the right colour quickly. I am feeling super pleased with myself. In the background you can see my new paints:

Here are my new stick on thingamys safely displayed in little screw top containers and my hand I've been practicing on. 

I also found some awesome chalk markers at my local art shop. No more box of broken chalk at events! They are fantastic, I love them!

Whoop whoop!

And just in case you've been missing out on the fun at my People Painting facebook page... here's a taste of some of my latest work:

No Self Harm

There's no self harming here in my home tonight... Pulled out my face/body paints for some practice instead. My technique is definitely improving. I've been up all night watching YouTube clips of designs and reading face painting forums. It's inspiring :-) I'm planning to buy some UV sensitive paints next, to use on my next night out at the local goth nightclub. Also some better sponges, to make bases easier. I'm still trying to problem solve how to manage a pay per face event as madly busy as the balloon regatta the other day... I would like to make up more booklets of designs to use, that's certain. In the meantime, there is practice and learning. It's nice to have something else to think about.





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.

Meltdowns And Split cakes

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.

Ink Painting - Sea dogs romping

I'm rough today. Sick, scared, angry, confused. Trying to follow that tiny thread of instinct - what might mean something to me? What might make me feel alive, just a little?

A new ink painting, something whimsical that made me smile:

Face painting class

I was so tired today, anxious and depressed and struggling. I slept in with the aid of some Phenergan, took the afternoon quietly and then tried to knock some of the scarier items off my to do list before a face painting class this evening. Some things - like pet food, are urgent, if you do feel like crap. My baseline stress levels are high and I found myself having an anxiety attack in the supermarket, and spending over $100 on renewing my post office box so that my painful neighbour can't steal my mail. :(

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.

Ink and Acrylic Artwork

I've been working on a new artwork lately, inspired by an exhibition of Del Kathryn Barton I saw in Newscastle earlier this year. This is the first time I've used inks on a canvas before and I love the effect. I also experimented with acrylic glazes for the first time.
It has the tentative title of The Artist, and is about self care and healing. 

Marketing, promotions, and online chaos...

I've been busy this weekend working on a new order of materials for my People Painting business. I've finished the Cert 3 in Microbusiness Operations, but in a month or so all the graduating students will be giving presentations about our businesses. There's a few more materials I'd love to have ready by then to show and tell. One of them is a T-Shirt that I can wear while painting at events, with my name and logo and contact details on it. My facebook friends have been invaluable in providing feedback on many drafts as I've worked on this. Of course, providing contact details only works if they're concise, up to date, and unlikely to change.

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.

New oil painting

I recently purchased some new art supplies, in a fit of 'I'm sick of being sensible and spending money on my car and dog'... so I came home with two new palette knives and a book on how to paint using them. It's a technique I've never tried before and I was curious...

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:

Stop Motion Animation draft

I have finally got a working draft of our animation uploaded to the net :)

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 :)

Dog boy

Finished painting my dog boy model :) Rather proud of him!

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.

This is what he looked like before I aged him - far too squeaky clean for a dog boy.

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.

Modelling clay

So, in digital media class, we are now working on a new project... stop motion animation! Today a classmate and I got together to make the set and model the little character for our story. She did the set and I did the polymer clay character and any little odds and sods needed for the set. Here's the dog-boy model I've made today:

And here's the little taps for the sink and a door handle:

I love this degree :)

Final gif projects

Yesterday was messy and many things went wrong, but I did just finish a whole set of projects that were due. I have learned a lot about photoshop which has been frustrating as all hell but also really interesting and probably useful! Our project required we make 2 gifs, one using memes and art appropriation, created on a smartphone or online gif generator. You can view it here, or have a look at my tumbr to see the works and ideas in development: sarahsdigimedia.tumblr.com

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.

Painting People at Markets

I've just got home and packed up from painting at a local market this morning. It was a bit of a landmark event for me - the first market where I directly charged the public per face, instead of being paid by the market organizers and painting anyone who attended. I was nervous about this! I've never done it before and I was worried about keeping track of money as well as painting people.

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. <3 We celebrated with chocolate on the way home. :)