Merry go round - Compass words for 2011

As it's the last Friday of the month, it's time to jump on the Merry go round for the first time this year!  We have two new members, Laura and Monika so I hope you'll check all the links. Our merry go round is where a group of 10 artists/craftwomen link together around the world and tell you a little about their art and craft, through blogging on the same topic.


This month's topic was to come up with three "compass words" for 2011.  Tonya Davidson from Whole Lotta Whimsy came up with an exercise that helps you reflect on what you've done and then contemplate your future - but using the written word instead of just in your head. By writing the exercise down - and publishing it here in my blog - it shows a greater commitment to change, rather than just a casual exercise.  The "compass words" then become a focus for the year ahead -whether they apply to your business or home life or both or whatever.  I hope you'll take the time and find your own compass words by clicking on the above link.  If you do - please add them to the blog post in the comments section.

Photo by geebee2007

The three words that I came up with for my compass words this year are: Grow, Explore, and Confident.  They apply both to my art/craft work and also other aspects of my life.

Photo by Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel

As I mentioned in an earlier post this year - I really feel a push, a need and the enthusiasm to try some new things. This is the "grow" and "explore" words.  I want to explore different techniques and media.  As I was a scientist before finding metal clay, I feel that "art" never played any significant part in school or work,  so I want to grow as an artist and feel like an artist. If you've been reading my blog recently, you'll see that my stay in San Miguel has really helped kick start my "grow" and "explore". I've been trying lots of new things and still have a week left....with some new things coming up.   I want to keep this up through the year to find new ways of doing things and grow from this exploration.

The "confident" compass word relates to several aspects of my life....I can feel quite confident in something one day and then have no confidence the next day.  So this is definitely a good thing for me to focus on.  My singing in the quintet particularly comes to mind with the "confidence" compass word when I frequently feel inadequate.

An idea that Tonya suggests you do when you identify your compass words is to write them down and put them somewhere where you will see them frequently, as a constant reminder.  I'll definitely be doing that when I get home.  Maybe we'll have to do a follow up blog post at the end of the year and see if change has happened in relation to our compass words.

I hope you have time to click on the links of the other merry go round team and see what compass words they all came up with for this year. We live in all different places around the world, so time differences may impact when we all get our blog post up.

Laura at Blue Terracotta -  http://blueterracotta.com/
Monika at Red2White - http://red2white.wordpress.com/
Ruth at Birdland Creations - http://insidetheartisan.blogspot.com
Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.com/blog/
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com
Fabienne at Easterya Jewellery Creations - http://easterya.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://florcita.eu/wordpress/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Lily at Lily Pang Art and Design - http://lilypangart.blogspot.com
Mitsy at ArtMind - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com

Or else you can follow the links to the actual blog post below:

New website launched! Take a look.

I've just redesigned and launched my new website www.birdlandcreations.com

I've built all my previous sites for myself and others using iweb, the mac web builder software. It's easy to use but really isn't very good for search engine optimization - so I bite the bullet and built my new one on Rapidweaver. I enjoyed it. I like the challenge and all the design features.......

Anyhow, I hope you'll go and take a look. Here's a preview. Click on the link at the top of this post to see more.


I've included a page in German and will add one in French too, to welcome my lovely customers from Europe. Even though the whole site isn't translated, I'm hoping they will appreciate some information in their own language.

And to encourage you to see more, I'm offering 50% off my "if friends were flowers, I'd pick you" earrings. You can buy them on the site for $40 - and hopefully it will then be chance for me to see if all the behind the scenes set up is working OK.


Let me know what you think.