Well I have had quite some changes these last months , newly, out of relationship, or 'change in relationship status', new province , new town, new work... the list is long. There have been and still are overwhelming moments discovering and rediscovering what things are important to me, along the way...
I am in the midst of many blessings and occasional disappointments and amazing bouts of awareness...
Some of the amazing awareness has to do with me and that I have recently discovered some of my school of life degrees... Owning that I do not have a Bachelor of Education, BA, BSc, and so forth. As it turns out my 'Degrees' in varying degrees are more akin to things like Bi-polar tendencies, ADD, OCD, and a few others like dislexia. And it would seem that these explain and help me understand that for which I have spent a lifetime being judged for... OK so no biggy, I also get that I am 'other' to most of my clan or tribe... The cool thing is that now I can stop joining the 'beat up Andreas faction of the clan', in the beating up of Andreas, and go about my business well in my own wellness , as it were.

So here I am in my newest layer of awareness, I have spent a very long time hiding and deferring to those achievers around me that I have held dear. believing that perhaps they were right all along... but in the end , I don't believe it after all because I am bursting with energy and positive light and loving kindness, and, though none of these have anything to do with dollars there is nonetheless measurable value there if on chooses to see it.
Therefore if the light of all this me is too bright, kindly put on your sunglasses in order to see me better or step back a bit, but please, please stop trying to douse me.... :0)
Thank you,
Namaste,
Say well,
And Be

Holy cow, I am amazed at how fast time flies.... I haven't written anything in quite some time because I have been fairly busy managing the changes brought on by a change in relationship status. That is to say, separation... through which I have managed to keep myself occupied enough up until now to not crash and burn.... however in spite of Ann's wise words , crash and burn sequence has slowly begun... I write somewhat tongue in cheek, but, we have all been to this place before and therefore I don't need to elaborate...well at least some of us have. So, I am still putting the pieces together, the first part building myself a second hand book store.....
Onward and forward, I suppose
And....

Lino Carved Mandala

Lino carving is something that I learned in high school, imagine that... So in an earlier post I included a picture of a lino cut that I printed on a t-shirt. that went very well until I washed it and realized that my ink was not permanant ink. I have now ordered permanant colours, and am carving this new Mandala for printing. By bits and pieces this mandalalama project is coming together, a little while ago I received my first order of greeting cards and origami paper. Putting those together in their biodagradable bags took a fair bit of time. And just yesterday I found the perfect display racks for the cards. Attimes I am surprised as to all the details that I need to work out just in order to launch this ...ah but what fun :0)

SNIPPIT

Collage is one of my favourite things, since almost as long as I have loved Mandalas. It seems to me that any excuse to ad colour into life is a good excuse. So, many years ago I bought this old ‘beater’ VW Rabbit for about $300 and I got what I paid for, with my Uncle rewiring and my cousin helping patch the holes finally I arrived at the repainting part of things which was more expensive than the whole car so painting was not an option. But, my sensibilities would not let me drive around in an ugly klunker so I hatched a plan and began cutting out old magazine photos and images (recycled car and magazines,yay). I remember that it took 1,400 ctouts and a week of gluing them onto the body of the car. Then once the glue had set I put on three oats of heavy duty ‘marine ‘varnish... and when I drove her to visit friends in Montreal she was named ‘Snippit... That car lasted only a year but it sure turned alot of heads, in fact I got asked to bring Snippet to a couple of schools to show the kids... In the end she died a slow painful death, I did hang onto her for awhile until fimnally she was shipped off to the junk yard...a sad day that was but that was the begining of a good thing...now I use all kinds of fun stuff for collaging...

Thoughts on process

I have been working on putting Pay Pal into Mandalalama in order to make some of the work here available to others. It amazes me how wonderfully handy our technologies can be ...and simultaneously how demanding the set up is. I heard a good analogy the other day. In order for a plane to fly it has taken years of imagining, building, testing and restructuring before it even leaves the ground. Then it requires an enormous energy boost for the take-off but after all those stages it can rest in a lower energy output for a while in 'cruising' mode. Alright, so I'm not building a plane ...But I would wager that Mandalalama will take us on some wonderfully unexpected journeys.
As for the practical aspects, after 3 years of active construction, the final piece of the puzzle, the website, is nearly ready to go...

New Mosaic floor

Last week I spent way too many hours on my knees, I was tiling the front entrance with found tiles and tile bits that I have been collecting for the last while... Part of our mandate for this little old house was to do all the renovations with used, recycled and re-purposed materials... So far so good. Last autumn I spent four long days pulling up 3\4 inch oak flooring which was condemned to the dump due to a bit of water damage. It has now replaced the vinyl floor in our living room... and why is this good for Mandalalama? Because it makes a pretty neat backdrop for photos of my T-shirts, greeting cards and origami paper... so I am preparing a photo shoot for this week so you can see what else I’ve been up to... all that having been said... have a joy filled day...

First print

Some while ago I started on the path of creating things under the label of mandalalama... the concept revolving around the concept of 'Balance'.

As a part of this creative process I get to learn tons of stuff. It began with me hurling myself into this digital world , I knew bubkiss, so I learrned about emails and USB keys and then I bought a laptop...now it had begun to really get exciting (you see I had recently climbed out of the woods in BC after 12 years) I really knew almost nothing... then I discovered and learned how to register domain names and blogs and facebook... and stumbled apon photoshop and all manner of cool design stuff... only to have all of that bring me back to water colour painting and lino block printing 'old style' so, as Johnny Cash and Hank williams sang....'that old wheel has rolled around again.

I've just finished carving my first linoleum mandala and test printed it and it looks just like the picture shows....