Decorating

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

~ Patty Radish ~ 13 Comments

The past year has definitely taken me places I didn’t foresee. It was around this time last year that I decided I needed to step back from my shoppe and reevaluate why I was doing it. With a lot of prayer and introspection, I find myself not only happy with that decision, but I’m stepping back even more! I’m not closing up shoppe yet, it just isn’t my main focus any more.

So, with the extra time on my hands, I’ve been diving in and taking care of my home, myself, and letting go of pipe dreams.

Pipe Dream: noun; an unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme

Case in point…

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Isn’t that a lovely scene?

This is the top of my dresser o’ yarn. I had been working on this blanket for a few weeks. I needed to use up some yarn from other projects, and thought I had found the perfect scheme.

The other day, I laid down all the squares I had finished to come up with a plan, and to my horror it was the ugliest blanket I had ever scene! What to do? I had already spent countless hours working on this, looking for inspiration online, plotting, planning, crocheting. I decided to cut my losses and hope that there may be someone else out there that could use a partially finished afghan. Anyway, off to the thrift store it went, along with a few bags of trim, knick knacks, and old books.

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Redemption!

The next day, I decided that the granny stripe afghan I had high hopes for was a bust also, so I took it apart, gave away the yarn I didn’t like, and started on something new. So far, I’m in love!

I’ll spare telling you how many schemes and projects I have let go of over the past few months. All I know is, I feel tons better. There are so many things I actually need to be doing, and my projects were holding me back!

From things like this…

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Dog walkies.

This has been calling to me for a long time! Fresh air and exercise. Of course I pick a time of year when the weather is getting rough, but oh well.

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A photo of my son in Myanmar last month. I stole it from his IG. I just love it!

The most important thing I need to focus on right now are my relationships! I am lucky to say that I have a lot of wonderful people in my life, and I need to put them at the top of my priority list, not just make room for them in my schedule!

I well and truly wish I could do it all, but I’m just not built that way. I will continue to scale down until I can do all that I need to be doing!

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Art journaling is still on the top of my “must do” list, but I’m spending more time ‘journaling’ than ‘arting’ as you can see. Lately, I have been finding that I really need to organize my thoughts through journaling. This is also a great way to use up old stickers. The washi tape helps keep my writing straight, such a struggle.

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So, I hope you’ll join me on my journey of scaling down, letting go, and simplifying my life. I can’t wait to share on this blog many of the things I did on my old one like gardening, cooking, makings, and what ever else I’m up to at the time. I will still share my art journals of course, I just think it’s time to share more of my life with you. Hope that sounds good!

Have a beautiful day!

Thanks for stopping in,

~Patty

Collage Gratitude Journal Video and Life Updates

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I hope this doesn’t seem redundant, but yes I have made another video.

IMG_4960It’s a process video of this Collage Gratitude journal, you can see the video here.

Announcing videos seems to be only activity on this blog of late, but I hope to change that up a bit some time soon with some shoppe news along with the occasional life updates.

I’m changing directions slightly on ‘this here blog’ because I share so many photos of my work on other social media, it felt as though I was repeating myself all the time, and I want the content here to be a little different.

Most of what I have been spending my time on lately is catching up on housework and decorating.

IMG_4947This set of drawers and shelf had been sitting naked for almost 20 years, I painted them over the weekend. It feels fantastic to finally get this done!

I’ve been spending the past few weeks going from room to room, making notes of what needs to be cleaned up, finished up, or gotten rid of. So, art making and my shoppe have been knocked down the priority list somewhat.  My house is really starting to look good, and it feels great! Having a laundry list of To Do’s in the back of my mind all the time was cluttering up my brain, and stifling my creativity.

There are still a few more pieces of furniture to paint, a few sewing and crochet projects to finish up, and some decluttering to do, but the more I do the less daunting it all seems.

I hope you don’t mind my switching things up around here. This is where I hope to post pix of my sewing and crochet projects, decorating, and shoppe updates, and keep most the art journaling photos on IG, YouTube, and Facebook. Just give me a follow if you want to see them.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks again for the visit,

Have a great day,

~Patty

Just Checkin’ In

~ Patty Radish ~ Leave a comment

Well, it has been little over a month since I last blogged, it seems like longer! I didn’t announce a break because I didn’t plan one, it just happened.

 I thought I would pop in quickly and let you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, or less dramatically, stopped blogging.

With all the whirlwind visits and obligations since the beginning of the year, I just kept falling farther and farther behind on just about everything in my life. So, I decided to drop a few obligations and play catch up…

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I’m slowly getting my house in order.

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The “Great Weeding Project” is well under way.

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I’m in the process of reworking another “List Journal”, a summer theme for this one.

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I have managed to fill my shoppe up a little.

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And, I try to start my day with some faith journaling.

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I have even managed to get a long awaited project off the launching pad, Project Life. This is a digital version, but I have also taken 35 years of photos out of very old photo albums, organized them chronologically, and started putting them into Project Life albums, Yay! I’ll be sharing more on this soon.

This is my life in a nut shell. It has been a mad scramble trying to get everything done, but well worth it!

I’ve decided that writing on this blog once a week will work for me much better than three times a week, at least for a while just to free up some much needed time.

Thank you for stopping by,

See you in about a week,

Patty

Washi Days

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

I have been on a bit of a washi tape buying binge lately. In my defense, I really use the heck out of it, and with Spring in the air, I needed some color!

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These are from Michaels craft store. I’ve been waiting for months for them to get some new varieties in. Very Spring-ish I would say!

I used a 30% off your entire purchase coupon for these. The two large rolls on the left are from the Heidi Swapp “Marquee Love” collection, the others are from the Michael’s “Recollections” brand. They’re all a bit pricey, but pretty good quality.

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Scotch brand is stepping up their game with some gorgeous color! I’m going to have to buy more of that pink floral soon, too cute!

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These are some skinny washis I bought on Amazon, made by MT Co. I just put “thin washi tape” in the search, then scrolled till I found some I liked. The florescent ones really add a nice punch of color to your work!

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I found these at “I luv Design” on Etsy while searching for that skinny washi by Amy Tangerine. If I’m going to pay shipping, I’m buying more, stands to reason! Some new faves! Great Shop!

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Hows that for cute! I bought these on Etsy from “Silent Poetry Arts“, isn’t that a lovely name! I love that woodland one, but that red and gold dotted one is super awesome!

I use the skinny washi to divide up my planner pages. It would be less expensive to draw a line, but definitely not as pretty! As you can see, finding skinny washi is getting much easier now I’m happy to say!

 I hope you will visit the Etsy shops I listed and check out their stock. Both are in the US and had a super fast turn around!

Until next time,

Thank you for stopping in,

Happy shopping,

~Patty

Nothing Like A Good Tidy!

~ Patty Radish ~ 2 Comments

Admittedly, this is not going to be the most exciting blog post I’ve ever written. But, because the only thing I have been working on over the last week is giving my creative spaces a good tidy, I thought I’d share.

Now, I’d love to get all philosophical about the positive results of having things organized and tidy, goodness knows I have enough books on the subject, but I’d much rather share the fruits of my labor and leave the theories to the experts.

The Art Room:

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See what I mean, not too exciting, but boy does it feel good! The drawback is remembering where I put things!

Some before photos would have been nice, but this has been kind of a long drawn out process due to recent circumstances.

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I’ve been working on getting my spaces cleaned up and streamlined for a few months now, but this week I had fun with the decorating bits.

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One of my goals was to calm down some of the color with wood and natural elements, I may officially have enough cigar boxes!

The Sewing Room:

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Probably my favorite corner in the house.

Orange? Don’t mind if I do!

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Nothing like a Lazy-Susan or two…or four! Not the most practical, but really fun to use.

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My creative space will not make it into a decor magazine by any stretch of the imagination, but each piece is very much loved! A couple of those suitcases were sitting empty for months until I figured out what to use them for, vintage, thrifted lace! perfect!

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Add a couple of plants and your good to go! Again, nested, unused vintage tins until I figured out what to use them for.

It’s been an awesome experience to finally let go of some projects and supplies that were holding me back. There is more to do of course, but the sense of urgency has passed. Now it’s time to create!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Have a great day,

~Patty