Tree Antlers and Blossom

The April edition of The ELM Tree subscription is out now, and included in it is this reduction lino print.

Strictly speaking, I don't actually use lino, I use rubber blocks because they are easier to cut (by a mile) and much easier to print. But it's still a reduction print.

Reduction prints are made with the one block of lino (rubber) and cutting away and printing the image in stages - as many as you want really.  I have never made one, so I tried to keep it simple.

This is black and white (as you can see) and so first I cut away what I wanted to be the colour of the paper - I planned for this image to be printed on coloured paper - and then printed a whole lot of them in white.

While they dried I cut away what I wanted to stay white, leaving only the small areas that I wanted to be black.
Then I reprinted them, being careful to align the papers with the prints already on the paper.

Ta-da!

There are only 30 of these prints IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and they are only available as a subscription to The ELM Tree. Because I have set the system up as a way to help me to buy materials to keep making art, there will be exclusive art in each month of the subscription - just to say thank you to those who are supporting me make the art that I love to make.

Hairy business

While I may have mentioned previously that I try not to use the ineffective coping mechanisms I used as crutches as a teenager (and 20- something) to deal with my mood swings and bipolarity, I do have to admit one thing.

It's not scientific in the slightest, but I would swear by the magical qualities of hair changes.
Not awkward puberty hair changes, I mean more like hair cuts, and colours and that kind of thing.

I'm not taking to my head with the clippers - which I have done in the past (it looked awesome just so you know)  - but I still feel new when I have new hair.

Some proof of how well I photograph.

 

Living in Taiwan 2008 (it got shorter)

 I mention all this because this is what my hair looks like now.

photo by Analiese

I did it myself, just a few days before this photo was taken. I'd dyed it not long after the Samurai was born, but over summer with all the swimming in pools and such it had faded. My ear is actually a bit coloured hahaha.

I don't really know what my deal is with hair colouring and changing, but it is the easiest thing to change, and I don't mind just getting rid of it all.
Am I the only one who feels the magical abilities of hairdressers or just haircuts/colours in general?

Now it looks like my head is on fire.

Katniss Everdeen eat your heart out. 

We made this

Families take so many different shapes.
So I make trees of different shapes.

I can make a tree for you too. As unique and personal as your history is. 

Trees that reach up and down with ancestors and descendants, trees with lost items scattered amongst the leaves evocative of the colourful history of your family. Trees with tiny portraits of those you love. Trees of whatever shape or colour means the most to you.

This is the most recent of my trees.

As a totally related foot note, Analiese is a talented photographer and if you are looking to get some family photos done, or any kind of photos - go and check her out.

Shame shame.

About a week ago I fell over.

I was walking with my family down the sloped driveway of our apartment complex wearing sandals that have exactly no grip on the soles of them. In an unrelated and fairly uninteresting tangent - I bought them while living overseas and my good sandals broke. I just haven't gotten around to buying good ones again.

Our driveway is made of flesh tearing concrete with tiny pebbles pressed into it... the kind that is uncomfortable to walk on. Do you know the kind I mean?

So my sandals were unsurprisingly crap and betrayed me, one foot slid out ahead of me down the hill and the other collapsed and I smashed my knee and the top of my ankle into the driveway which took some skin and Ellie-meat as a souvenir.

The husband let go of the pram to help me up, which went drifting down the hill along with the four month old Samurai. It was dramatic. (You had to be there I'm sure)

I hobbled back to the house and cleaned up and we went out again without any more issues, but the whole thing was actually fairly embarrassing.

Which got me thinking.
Some things are just WAY more embarrassing when you're an adult. (Most of them are bodily function type things.) Here are some of the things that are more embarrassing (for me) as an adult:

1. Falling over. I'm a touch over 6 foot tall and it's like felling a smallish tree when I fall over. Highly ungraceful.

2. Not knowing how to drive. Not driving as a child - legal and acceptable. Not driving as an adult? Lame. I don't, and the older I get the more awkward it is when people ask me about it. Working on it!

3. Getting words wrong. I remember for a long  time I thought that my Opa was fighting gorillas when he was in the army. Stories of him punching cows (he was a farmer and this only happened to the most ornery bovine) made this seem even more logical to me. Turns out they were guerrillas. Another time I was reading a book and asked my mum what brassieres were. Bra's she said, and what kind of book was I reading?? I read the sentence and they were actually braziers - which made a lot more sense. I now look up any words that I don't recognise in text, my spelling is still atrocious, but my vocabulary is much better.

4. Not knowing my times tables. Along with telling the time on analogue clocks, I just never really clicked with times tables as a kid. I have since mastered telling the time (phew) but I still sometimes have to sing the times tables songs to remember them. Thankfully phones have calculators.

5. Calling people the wrong name. Most people have called their teacher 'Mum' at some point - admit it. I called Ronin by his brother's name for a full month after he was born. I only have two children - there really isn't much chance that I'm actually confusing them, my brain is just turning into mush.

6. Sanitary Pad failures. Been dealing with the whole 'being a lady' since I was 12 - getting it wrong is still mortifying.

What things embarrass you as a 'grown up' ?

In my mind

So it's nearly the end of March and in my mind I still feel like it's January. I don't know what's going on, but my sense of time seems greatly distorted.

When I was 18 I travelled to China to teach English for 6 months. While I never really said it aloud at the time (for fear of sounding pretentiously idiotic I'm sure) I hoped that the time away from my comfortable and familiar life would help me to 'find myself'.
What I faced instead was an internal and external struggle not against cultural differences, but myself.

Despite the drastic change of environment, I was still the same uncertain person who couldn't bear the thought that other people may think badly of me (regardless of what I thought of them.) That fear led me to apologise for anything that may cause other people offence, whether I had done something wrong or not. I made bad decisions, had toxic friendships, and lost sight of who I was by trying to be the girl that other people thought I should be, or wanted to be, rather than the person I wanted to be myself.

"Finding" yourself is a joke. We create who we are, sometimes more deliberately than other times.
This is of course entirely my opinion. There are many people out there who are happily anchored, and don't toss about like a boat in a storm with every different opinion they hear, every action made by a friend. This is a skill I am striving for.

Ten years have passed since I was in China, and I still see in myself those same weaknesses (thankfully to a lesser extent)
I'm sick of beating myself up about them though.
So I will acknowledge that those weaknesses are born of a trusting and loving heart and a desire to make peace and happiness in the lives of others. That's not a bad thing surely.

So here at 28, wife and mother of two - still riddled with weaknesses and faults - I'm getting over it.
I had a cranky week, I re-dyed my hair (I look like my head is on fire when my hair is out) I rearranged my whole house (it took two days) and with those simple superficial changes I feel more prepared to launch myself into deeper changes and continue on the ongoing journey of self discovery creation.
I think like losing weight, losing bad habits and emotional problems is best done with action.


Here's a song.

I have big heart for Neil Gaiman, he's my favourite author ( I met him once - he has very soft hair ) and for his wife Amanda Palmer who I've never met, but who's music I have admired for a long time. When I found out they were married I was excited to an illogical level that totally reveals my fangirl status. Whatever.

:)

memories longer than the road

It isn't my way to lay out my life on my blog. This is predominantly a vehicle for me to share my art with people... however. Sometimes my soul feels all crumpled up. Sometimes music can really help.
This is one of the songs that smooths things over.

I actually like this cover better than the original (its a beatles song) and have loved it for years. Lately I have been mega stressed and so I escape in the evenings to go running with my sister, or to deliver flyers around the neighbourhood. It's hardly a 'running song' (Nut Bush is like the best song ever to run to) but it is just so ... peaceful.

Get amongst the music sharing, and link up with Jess at A Heart Full of Frost.

Subscribe to the elm tree!!

I love getting mail. I think my mail box gets hungry for real mail though, and by that I mean not bills, and not advertising material.

I used to have a subscription to New Scientist (because I'm like - nerdy or something) and Better Homes and Gardens (which always used to make me covetous of people with houses) but they both expired and in the end I had a whole lot of magazines that I didn't know what to do with... so I have come up with a way to feed the hungry mail boxes of the world.

Now you can subscribe to The ELM Tree. 

No, it's not a magazine. 
It's art. It's prints, stickers, postcards, illustrations, paintings, drawings, and all sorts of other creative goodies delivered direct to your mail box every month.         

Pick you own 3, 6, or 12 month subscription over at my etsy store, or even just get a one off delivery of artiness for you or as a gift. 

There will be some specials related to this coming up so keep your eyes peeled.