Mandala for Exploration and Bounty

Mandala for Exploration

acrylic paint and scrap textile samples (cotton and linen)

43/100 in 100 days creative challenge and Day 3 in August Everyday

This last weekend, I took my kids to a town festival. On our way to the bouncy house and clown performance, we walked past all the merchants who had set up tables outside of their stores. One of the stores was a furniture store, and they had PILES of fabric samples for giveaway. I was being conservative and walked away with three packages.

This mandala is one of my first attempts to see what I could do with the bounty of fabric samples.Bounty of fabric samples.

Look at those colors and textures and patterns!

I am almost more excited at the varied types than I am at the cost (free!) Almost, not quite. I enjoy the challenge of turning what I have into something special. I get to look at the materials and figure out what I can do with it.

Sometimes the materials call out for their own project.

I particularly like the natural and organic linens and cottons that I used in the mandala. They fit with a project I have had in my mind for a long time... but they changed the project too. The mandala was a test to see how the paint would work on the cotton/linen for the working project, but I thought the test was successful. Maybe sometimes this week I will show you the larger working project. Right now it is sitting on my bookshelf, waiting for its next stage. It has said it is not done yet, although I'd already done the photo shoot. Oh, okay, if you insist. Here's a detail of the working project.

Does she look familiar? I posted her a while back. And she is one step closer towards completion.

I have so many things in a state of partial completion right now. I'm not just working on one piece at a time. I work on one thing and set it aside, finish a smaller project, go back to something from weeks ago. Do a craft project for the kids.

Perhaps I shouldn't have shown the art doll in progress. Or perhaps I shouldn't have counted this mandala as a part of my challenge on its own, since I'll probably take it into another level and create something with this small scrap of mandala... but hey, part of this challenge for me is to take a look at all of the ways I am being creative in my life and accept them as part of a

creative life.

Do you give yourself credit for all that you do? Or do you always say, "not yet" "I haven't done enough" "I am not good enough" "I have to do more, try harder, be better?"

I do. I say all those things to myself all the time.

But they aren't true.

The truth is you are good enough just the way you are, in your imperfection, in your attempts to grow and change and create and love. We are good enough even when we fail, when we don't reach our goals, when we don't do all those things that we think we "should."

We're all enough.

Do you believe it?