A world of wonderings.

I've started a new blog to run along side this one...

I want to keep "Chaos..a cup of tea" as a place to document my art work, hopefully in the not too distant future I will find the energy and motivation to get creating again.

For now, I have begun this new one as a place to be more personal, to talk about life and love. To vent when I need to, and to celebrate all the things I love in life. So here it is...

http://worldofwonderings.blogspot.co.uk/

Ax

Lists and superwoman.

I have a list. It exists in my head and it seems to have a perpetual motion all of its own. 

The title of this list is "Thing I hope to get round to doing someday soon".

Well, in most cases 'Someday" never really comes or if it does theres usually another thing waiting to bump its way onto the bottom of the list to fill up whatever space was momentarily created. 

It's a miserable grey day today. Theres no wind and the rain is falling in vertically, creating a transparent bead curtain. I keep looking out at my garden which is in dire need of attention. I left the trampoline in one place too long over the winter and it's left a muddy fairy ring where there should be grass. The girls toys are all over the place and the fence needs a good paint. It's pretty frustrating to look at but i find that my strength and determination is zapped just by the day to day existence of looking after three small people.

I have had to change my routine this week, now I'm having to cycle middle Onen to school while towing smallest Onen in a trailer on my bike. Its working out fine really, the timings are pretty good and I'm not having to push too hard...

But I'm exhausted. Partly because I'm unfit. Partly because I'm making ever bigger demands of myself.

And they are demands. I demand it of myself to achieve certain things in a day. Children dressed in clean clothes, fed sensible food (most of the time), clean, happy, sorted for the school day. Washing up and cooking done, laundry on and dried (putting away usually falls short, and don't ever mention ironing to me, that's reserved for special occasions...it would lose it's enigma if I did it too often). Work done to the best of my ability.
And in all of that, that I've taken time to love, to listen, to clean grazed knees and sort out squabbles and take pride in my wonderful little people.

But honestly if another thing goes wrong today I will cry.

My dear one lovingly reminds me that i'm "only human". 

Because of the every day demands "the list" never seems to decrease. Damn it, I want to be Superwoman. Just for a week, a day even. I want to catch up with myself. To stop feeling like I'm constantly chasing my tail.

But I'm learning resilience and perseverance... 
That's a good thing right?

Blue Wednesday

Well, today has started pretty badly in my head. See...even my coffee cup is having a bad day. Now it's not much a secret that I'm quite an emotional person. I do have this tendency to swing from ecstatically happy to the world falling apart in a few short steps...I'm working on it. But do you ever have those times where things are going great and then all of a sudden something completely unavoidable throws a spanner in the works.

That's what happened yesterday. Having had couple of years of turbulence in life in general I have finally come to a point of sitting down and really dreaming about where I want to go, what i want life to look like in the aftermath of very young children. My youngest starts school full time in September and that has kind of opened the mental floodgates to think about who I am and what I want to do. My boss has this really great way of getting me to dream and making anything seem possible with a bit of hard work. 

So, over the last few days I've been off down the dreaming highway, with all kinds of ideas and passions coming to the surface for inspection as i try and make some sense of what drives me. Then a fair crucial piece of information came to light yesterday, one that is completely unavoidable but is a bit of a game changer, at least in the short term. Suddenly I'm faced with figuring out how to make day to day life work all over again.

Dreams shelved again.
For the meantime anyway.

I really tried very hard last night to process the changes in a calm manner. I have faced stupidly challenging situations in the last few years, so my immediate logical reaction is "you've faced things that looked even more impossible than this and it has always worked out" but emotions are tough things to silence. So I woke up this morning feeling really dejected about everything, feeling completely unable to see the wood for the trees.

But you know what, i will not be beaten. There will be a way through. I really just wanted to hide under my duvet this morning and pretend like it isn't happening but that isn't going to make it go away. Experience has taught me that doing things even when I don't really feel like it does an awful lot for my mental state. So I got the girls ready for school, had a coffee and a long hot shower. I chose my favourite clothes and took my time with my hair and make up even though I might not leave the house. I've filled the house with good music and allowed myself to breathe in the space.

So, the situation looks grim and really tricky...but you know, you and I overcome incredible odds every single day. If you're reading this and feel overwhelmed by a situation or just by life in general...you've got this!
I realise I'm trying to be a little superwoman in all this. I want to be able to handle it all on my own. I want to prove I can do it by myself, and a little bit of me is willing to suffer to prove a point.

That's pride talking and it's a bit nuts. 

The key is connection. Whatever it is that you need to get through the day...ask. Find someone to ask. Stop feeling like this fight is yours alone to win. We find victory when we stand together in our struggles. No one expects you to do it all alone, and they don't expect me to either. Right, time to make some phone calls to some wonderful lovely people.

Have a good one xx

A gentler beginning.

Ah, so time for the obligatory "New Year" post. Full of resolutions and crazy objectives for the coming year. 

This year will be the year that I finally do all those things I've been meaning to get round to doing. The year i find the inspiration and motivation to go on a "low carb, no sugar, vegan, raw juice, eat only spinach two days a week" diet and frequent the gym five times a week.


No. Really, no!

The marketing machine is in full swing of selling us the post-christmas indulgence guilt trip. I've lost count of the amount of gym membership, diet pill, beauty adverts I've seen on the little TV that i watch. So, wait...you've convinced us that we need to spend a fortune indulging over christmas on decadent food and then, in the blink of an eye, sending us on a guilt trip for gaining a few pounds...and we all fall for it! 

I have made one decision this year. Call it a resolution if you must but I prefer to just see it as an attitude shift, one that won't be dependant on changing seasons. 

I'm going to be gentler with myself.

During a conversation with a dear friend of mine of facebook a few days ago I recalled reading an article about how we have a propensity to view ourselves with a very critical filter. If all our thoughts about ourselves slip through this filter we run a huge risk of focussing solely on our own, sometimes imagined, negatives. This year I'm going to give myself permission to be less critical with myself. If I'm brutally honest I really struggle with this. I have three fabulous girls under 8 years old, i have two part time jobs and a house to look after and i beat myself up constantly over my perceived failings.

We need to give ourselves permission to go to bed each night thinking "I did this or that today, and that's good!"
Not consumed by the endless list of things that need doing. 
We need to allow ourselves mental space to just appreciate the myriad of things that we do achieve every single day. 

Sometimes, the fact that my children have woken up, been fed, dressed in (usually) clean clothes, made it to school and home again, and enjoyed their day...sometimes, I need to allow that to be enough, to be good enough. Rather than my head telling me how i didn't manage to do x,y,z. Sometimes I need to allow the fact that I managed to make it to the end of the day and not have a sink full of washing up to wake up to, that that's been enough for that day.

I'm not suggesting laziness. But i am suggesting that we look at what we really spend time doing and how we allow ourselves to think about us. So, I'm not going to beat myself up over the few pounds gained over christmas, because I gained them sharing food with my lovely family and friends and there is time to make small adjustments over the coming months if I really feel the need. 

I'm not going to beat myself up over the laundry up in my bedroom that isn't put away yet or the toys that aren't really in the place i'd like them to be. Or that there's a pile of paper that needs filing in the kitchen, or that the washing up that has drip dried needs putting away. Or that I have multiple cupboards that are blackholes which really need some attention and i haven't done it today.

Instead, today I allowed myself a little bit of love and had a hair cut for the first time in eternity. I worked hard at my job and went a little cross-eyed over spreadsheets. I've cleaned a bit, enough that I'm comfortable with and I've cooked good food (which is still cooking in the oven and smells so good it's making my stomach rumble!) and I'm waiting for my beautiful three to come home from their dads. Today has been a good day.

You, whoever you are reading this, are an extraordinary individual. There are things that you do, thoughts that you have and ways of seeing things that only you can do. No one will ever have your combination of love, passion, creativity, determination, and inspiration ever again. You achieve amazing things everyday even though it doesn't feel like it, and you have done some of them today.

So rather than going to bed tonight with a mental to-do list, kicking yourself for what little you have achieved...
Make a list of the good things that have happened and, above all, be gentle with yourself.

Ax

No more excuses! (Or - Please stop spreading hate-filled rubbish across Facebook!)

I apologise that this will be a little bit of a rant. I had hoped that this blog would be a place of positivity and pretty artwork but this subject has just pushed too many buttons...

I am the mother of three extraordinary, beautiful, talented, infuriating, happy girls. One small observation that can be made about them is that their skin colour isn't the same as mine, and that they have the most incredibly curly hair that is insanely difficult to brush. This isn't something that defines the people they will grow up to be. It's just well...a thing. Their dad is Ugandan and I met him in deepest, darkest Devon after he had been sponsored to come over here by a youthwork charity. We chose to get married and we fought to get visas for him in order to make that happen. We paid best part of £3000 over about 5 years in order for him to stay in this country.

So that's a little background. Here is what has made me mad...my Facebook newsfeed has become increasingly full of people sharing hate filled propaganda about migrants coming to this country and about how we should be taking care of our ex-military personnel. 

Today I saw a picture of two african guys at the top saying "coming to England is like being reborn" and a homeless guy (supposedly ex-serviceman) on the bottom saying "Ex-servicemen should be housed before immigrants, share if you agree"
This was being pedalled by Britain First.
What disturbs me is that most of these things i keep seeing are being shared by an older generation of people.

"Oh, it's because of their generation. They just have no filter"

Um, excuse me. NO!

Racism is learned, and I do not want my girls to learn it. For the African gentlemen in that picture (that was obviously plucked off Google and used), coming to England probably was like rebirth. I would like the idea of being able to walk down the street at night in safety, if in the past I had been in fear for my life. Just because you can still hide behind a computer and hit "Share" that does not make it ok!
Now, I understand the sentiment. There is something wrong in the system. However, just because someone wasn't born in this country, why the hell should they bear the brunt of you mindless prejudice? What's laughable about this particular picture is that the African guys are probably from either Somalia or Sudan (I'm taking a little guess here but bear with me) Seriously, have you even been to either of those countries?!?! Have you ever walked through a refugee camp?!? Oh wait, let me guess, you gave a fiver after watching Comic Relief last year. Did it make you feel better?

This is a little bit of a geographic jump but when i was in Uganda in 2007 I went to an IDP camp...a camp for Internally Displaced People. It means they're still in their own country but just happen to have lost everything and had to move because the north of the country was being ripped apart by Militia groups fighting the military. That trip was probably the most harrowing experience of my life. Never have i felt so completely helpless or looked around and wondered what on earth the human race was doing to itself. 

Children kidnapped and made to become soldiers and kill their friends as an initiation.
Girls kidnapped and gang raped
Livestock stolen
Homes burned
Livelihoods destroyed
All in a country that was struggling to recover from the echoes of Idi Amin.

The camp i went to was the smallest ones in the area, and it contained 11,000 mud huts. These huts don't have any land, electricity or running water. There are no schools, or jobs. There is no hope. If you estimate very conservatively that each hut housed 4 people, that's 44,000 in one small area. In the height on Uganda's conflict in 2005 there were 1.8 million Internally Displaced People in 251 camps across 11 districts in Northern Uganda. I'm picking this particular conflict because I've experienced it, but the point I'm making is that while we sit in our warm living rooms, with our broadband and our cups of tea, blaming immigrants for taking our jobs, our homes and our wives we need to understand the circumstances under which these people left their homes.

Go, and damn well educate yourselves, people! You are responsible for what you associate yourself with! No more excuses!

Of course it's a disgrace that our military are not treated better. Military personnel account for 1 in 10 of homeless people in this country, you know what, that's 9 other people who need a home too! But would it be a little too radical to point out that as one of the most prosperous countries in the world...we might actually have enough to look after EVERYONE! How about we dock the Bankers bonuses and use that to pay for housing?! Just a thought. 

The true issue in this world is that if we stopped killing each other and oppressing each other things would change so much. But our world is so saturated with attitudes of fear and hate that it's literally ripping humanity apart. When you share stuff by people like Britain First, you are taking part in this hate. Hate needs to be fed in order to grow and that's what you're doing.
You are jumping to the defence of our ex service personnel in the very manner and attitude that those who lost their lives in WW1 and WW2 and many wars since, were trying to protect you from! 

How, oh, how can you not see that sad irony.

I would like it noted that some of the people sharing and agreeing with this garbage also tell me how wonderful my children are - to you I say this, you might want to think about that - if you tell me my children are so wonderful, imagine the other wonderful people who come to this country who could be your potential new best friends.
This post is written in anger and frustration. I am shaking as I write because my heart is breaking for this world. I refuse to share this stuff because I do not want my children to inherit this world of hate that you are perpetuating. I want them to love people. Period.

A new addiction!

Now, before you panic, this isn't a blog post about illegal substances. I have found a new art form that I'm completely addicted to. I have a somewhat addictive personality, i'll admit. I do tend to get a little obsessive about things in short (and sometimes longer) bursts. But the reason behind this one is a little different...

I have discovered Zentangle!

Just a couple of my own designs

Zentangle was created Maria Thomas, a lettering artist and Rick Roberts, who lived as monk for 17 years. It's an incredibly focused technique that creates a "string" and then fills in the spaces that the string creates with patterns or "tangles". All that is required is good cardstock, a fine black pen and a pencil. That's all.

The premise behind this art form is very much about process. To be a true Zentangle, the drawing must be done on a 3 1/2 inch square and that's one of the beauties of this kind of drawing. it is small and portable. Its easy to see results in a fairly short space of time. 

This one was done on my train journey to Birmingham, slightly frustrating trying to deal with the movement.

But the most profound thing i have discovered is what it does to my brain while I'm doing it. I frequently become quite lost in thought when I'm painting or creating but not like this. It is so absorbing that everything else just fades away. I feel calmer (and life has been pretty darn intense recently) and I have been sleeping better too.

Feeling so quiet in my head is such a lovely feeling, when we're so enveloped in a world of sound. I often get quite cross with myself for wasting evenings when i could have been creating in my studio space but sometimes starting a big project is just too overwhelming when I'm tired. So achieving just this small thing in an evening is very satisfying.

And the best thing...anyone can learn it. Sure, it will take a bit of practice, and starting simply is key. But i picked up a book with lots of instructions on how to get started and a directory of official "Tangles" for under £5. Also Rick and Maria have an official blog with lots of inspiration and suggestions, you can find it here. 

This art form, of course, is not limited. "Zentangle Inspired Art" pushes the boundaries out further, and led to an explosion of animals and objects all illustrated with beautiful tangles. Pinterest has a wealth of inspiration and instructions with step by step guides, so it's really hard to run dry on ideas.

Tapping into creativity is being recognised more and more as a vital part of our overall well-being and mental health but sometimes knowing how and where to start with that is hugely daunting. I would suggest for anyone who doesn't know where to start...this is perfect! So, if you're looking for a creative outlet, a new hobby or perhaps you struggle to switch off before bed and suffer with insomnia...I would really encourage you to give this a go, not only will you create something amazing but the other benefits will be fabulous.

Happy drawing x

Dream. Create. Inspire.

Dream, Create, Inspire

It's been a while since i last posted, since then we've had three lots of chicken pox in the house, birthdays, school and preschool inductions and all manner of things in between.

This piece, like a lot of other things i seem to create, became a birthday present for a very special friend, who is a very talented musician and highly creative person. But it had the added complication that i couldn't just resort to my go-to flowers and butterflies because it need a much more masculine feel to it (although I'm sure there are guys out there who would be just as appreciative of those things).

I'm taking a lot of inspiration from Steampunk at the moment, loving the fantastical creations and free reign for the imagination, so with a little dose of that and some beautiful rust and gold colours this altered bottle was born.

Just some of the things used include Tim Holtz Idea-ology embellishments, Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays, Finnabair stamps and a selection of clock parts from Ebay.

I think it was well received and it was a pleasure to make.
Axx