My Hand Made Felt Pins and Some Etsy Inspiration

A Bunch of Handmade Felt Pins, or What I've Been Doing With My Time
wool and polyester felt, thread, embroidery floss, thread, acrylic gel medium, acrylic paint and bar pins.

What is possessing me lately?

I do not know. The painting has mostly slid to the side, and I have been doing stuff in other media.

It recalls a younger me, I think, and all the mixed and multi media things I used to do over the course of my life. Mostly to keep my hands busy, I think. I always feel better if my hands are busy. Is that weird? I'm rather a low key person. Maybe that's where my energy goes.

I've been inspired also by other artists, who work in many media, not limited to just painting or drawing.

Like perhaps Brooke Schmidt, who I just discovered this weekend but was immediately smitten with. Wax and Coffee! (I just love this one so much. The circles and repetition, the mixed media reflection, the colors.)
Clay. (I love when the same imagery you've been envisioning pops up in other people's work. I don't know if it's the zeitgeist, or sychronicity, or chance, or I'm just noticing it more, but it's cool.)

Textiles (Look! It's wings. How can I resist wings?)

Fabulous. And look, here's her blog, which seems quite in tune with the things I'm exploring... or perhaps are too lazy to explore right this minute. Coolness. I think I am in love with the internet.

What do Brooke's pieces have to do with my little pins? Not much... although the magnet does kind of resemble them, and I was thinking about doing a cloud pin before I even saw it, I swear. But I do think that looking around at how other people are trying to integrate the different aspects of their lives, how they don't tie themselves always to the same medium or vein of self expression, it has allowed me to feel better exploring my own varied creativity.

We don't have to tie ourselves to labels, like "painter," "writer," "crafter," "mom." We can exist within all of these facets. We're not one thing, right? We're many things. Don't be surprised if I start making dolls, or experimenting with papier mache, or start painting really big canvasses (although I can't imagine where I would have the room to do that, right now.)

All I'm saying is, we don't have to limit ourselves. We can expand into realms we are drawn to, whether or not we are experts in the field or we are experts in other fields.

I keep a list of lovely projects or things I'd like to learn how to do, or things I want to research. Lately, I've been looking back at those lists and saying, why not.

What would be on your list of lovely undertakings?

PS I just noticed that Brooke's wax and coffee art work echoes the collection of pins. It's almost the same pattern. A cluster of dots. I totally did not see that before.