Reiki and other updates

We hosted our annual wellness fair at the college last week.  It's a great event and we bring in a lot of free neat experience for students, faculty and staff such as free manicures, shoulder massages, cholesterol and blood pressure checks, and so on.  We even had Reiki and I got to experience it first hand. I no a little bit about it and have always wanted to try it but just haven't come across the chance to experience before now.  I received about a 15min. Reiki experience where a guy asked for permission to gentle touch spots on me (such as my forehead, shoulders, stomach, knees, and feet) while I was laying down.  I'm a person who likes that 3' of personal space so it was slightly odd having someone breathing right over me during parts.  It also wasn't that serene of an environment since we were in a large space with the booths right outside the door. With that said, I found it somewhat relaxing but no earth shattering changes.  My peaceful mood lasted about 10 minutes until I went back to work!

Other updates:
1. I received my list of zendoodle exchanges and mailed them all out to the recipients last Monday. 6 of the recipients on my list are from different places in the US and 6 are from other countries throughout the world.  I recieved an email over the weekend that a person I sent a zendoodle to in Oregon got my zendoodle. I then received one from her in the mail today.  Below is a pic of my first zendoodle I received in the exchange project.

2. I found out last Monday that my sister is having a baby girl! I'm so excited as this means I will have not only an awesome nephew but an already much loved niece. She will of course be spoiled!

3. I made it to trampoline fitness last week and had a blast. I realized I missed it and was hoping I could get there again this week but it doesn't look like I will be able to. Another full busy week of commitments.

4.  I went to the art therapy and art club event on campus since I am the AT club advisor. The students were hosting a 6x6 ROCO party for the community. They had two art based techniques they would teach you if you wanted to learn something new (which of course I did) and then you could also submit your pieces to ROCO. They ended up collecting 32 pieces to donate for the fundraiser.

The art technique I learned was to put shaving cream on a paper plate and spread it out. Then use food coloring, choose your colors and put just a couple of drops wherever you want on the shaving cream. Use a toothpick to make a design or mix the colors together if you want. Then place your canvas or art board down on the shaving cream and tap gently.  Lift up and flip over. Using paper towels wipe off all of the shaving cream residue (this is where you can experiment a lot by how you choose to wipe of the shaving cream- circular motions, up and down, etc...). I could have experimented with this technique all night. As it was, I was only planning on being there for an hour and was there for 1.5 hours! Below are pics of my newest 6x6 creations.

5.  Here is a pic of a mandala I made in the art journaling I'm keeping for the Art (Therapy) + Happiness Project.

My 6x6 Artwork Sold

When I got back from vacation I checked out the site for the 6x6x2012 art exhibit at: http://www.roco6x6.org/6x6x2012.php  and discovered that 3 out of 4 of my pieces of artwork that I donated sold already. If you look mine our #'s 754,755,756,757. I have a theory as to why the fourth piece hasn't sold and that is because the 3 that sold are on the bottom row of a page while the 4th image is at the top of the next page. It's still cool most of them have sold and so soon!

I also stuck with tradition and purchased a piece (I've purchased a piece for each year that the event has been going on). This is my 5th piece and is #3035. I'm really excited in a month to find out who the artist is.

Update: 7/8/13- Hooray! All of my artwork sold!!! I happened to check today and the final piece had SOLD on it!

My Purchase's/ Art Center Room Decorations

I purchased a piece of artwork from each 6x6 exhibit since it began in 2008. I found a great deal on frame's at Michael's (buy one get one free). Now they are hanging in my art center room and look wonderful.

It was very neat to purchase the artwork and see who created them. One is from a Geneseo College Student, another is an Illustrator, and the newest piece from the 2011 show turned out to a neighbors daughter. Isn't that crazy-out of 5,000 pieces I end up picking a neighbor's!

Mixed Media Paintings: Birds, birds and more birds

Last week I felt like putting all other duties aside and painting. There was nothing in particular I needed as far as creating for a space. I went to Michaels with a 40% of coupon and ended up finding a package of four 6x6 canvas's and decided to purchase them. By the time I got home I decided the paintings I would create would have a theme to them and I would use them for the faculty/staff art exhibit (of course this isn't until Feb. 2012) but it gave me some purpose and vision moving forward. It also worked out that the sizes are 6x6 so that I will be able to donate the artwork to the 6x6x2012 fundraising exhibit at ROCO.

I've been on a bird kick lately and enjoy quotes, so this became my theme I used. Also, for the past year and a half I've been into using mixed media when I paint. I tried out a couple of techniques on these paintings and like most things in life...it took a couple of tries before I found an outcome I liked. I used a lot of layers, beginning with music sheets or decorative collage paper, then tended to rip some of it off and put a watered down acrylic wash over everything (sometimes so much so that you can't even see what kind of paper was used), then painted the birds on with acrylic paints, and used cut up words to create a quote which I then scotch taped on the canvas, and finally finished with a couple coats of decoupage or varnish.

What do you think?