Velveteen Mind

Inspiration by Immersion

Sinking into a hot bath, as hot as I can stand, slipping beneath the biting lavender scented foam (I love the sharp lavender, not the doughy sweet kind), I feel something pop loose at the base of my neck. Tension I hadn’t even realized was there, eased by the heat and soothing scent, escaped without so much as a “Nice knowing you.”

I needed this. Total immersion. I needed this more than I realized.

• • •

This past weekend, I went to BlogHer Handmade & The Creative Connection in St. Paul, Minnesota. Invited to moderate a panel about building content around community, I admit I tweeted the day before I left that “the only thing I can hand make is a mess.” Har har, I know.

Secretly, though, I was hoping to come away armed with everything it would take for me to be one of those hipster Etsy girls, without the actual Etsy-handmade-talent bit.

Think Sara Sophia from The Lovely Guide. Very “I grew up in a meadow and make all of my clothes out of fairy wings and organic yarn. I’d show you how but I have a wholesale shipment due to Paris.” Effortless whimsy with a solid measure of sophistication.

I even signed up for a Professional Image class taught by Becki Crosby of Whippy Cake. I’m not sure what I expected but I am pretty sure it included a dash of pixie dust and a magical understanding of liquid eyeliner and layering skirts with tights. Probably something about fabric flower headbands, too. I don’t know what to tell you, it was just all going to come together, wrapped in a screen printed ribbon!

Inspiration by way of total immersion. Instead of hot water and bubbles? Hot glue and glitter!

To be fair, I did not see any hot glue. It wasn’t that type of craft conference. There wasn’t even that much glitter. An outrage, really. I was counting on outrageous loads of glitter.

I was right on target, though, with the creativity immersion. It worked.

The handmade community is studded with talent that I openly admire. One of their best is one of my own Story Bleed editors, Amy Turn Sharp. I had to travel to the uppermost point of our country in order to spend time with her and it was thoroughly worth it. I watched her work her table for her own handmade shop, Little Alouette, far enough beyond her peripheral vision that I could freely observe her without making her self-conscious. I could have watcher her for hours. Her heart opened, nearly visibly through her face, drawing strangers in with grace and kindness. They were taken with her. I know.

Balancing art and commerce is what the handmade community does well, yet they are actively working on improving as they learn more about integrating social media into their business. Technically, that lesson is why I was there. But now you know I was really there for my tarnished old soul.

I went to Minnesota with a crick in my creativity. I soaked in the inspiration, willing their art to loosen my joints by osmosis. If glitter could be absorbed into your psyche, immersion in brilliance would be the first step.

Read more. Write more. Take everything in until you feel sparks fly from your fingertips. If your heart doesn’t feel close to bursting, find something brilliant to soak in until it throbs!

Dive deep to the heart of what you crave. Seek inspiration and immerse yourself in your findings until you can shake glitter from your hair.

• • •

Hallmark is a sponsor of VelveteenMind.com through the end of 2011. 
Sign up for their newsletter for discounts and tips on how you can celebrate everyday moments as a special occasion.

One of their latest newsletters shared their new mini-commercials and I was excited to see my own brother’s ex-girlfriend in the “Sorry” mini!
Watch it! I’ll cave and admit it did inspire me to write more cards. So worth it.

Opinions are always my own, usually long-founded and stubborn.  ;)

Do visit Life Is A Special Occasion and scroll down to the bottom of the page to "Featured Bloggers" to read more stories from the campaign's writers.

• • •

Tell me, what inspires you? What are you currently craving?
What do you plan to do about it?

  Don't miss an update! Free delivery of new posts via email (recommended) or feed reader.

Follow me on Twitter!  |    Like Velveteen Mind on Facebook  |  

Subscribe to Velveteen Mind on or

 

Muddy Waters circa Jay-Z

I rarely post twice in one day but, ya'll, I have to show you something!

Jump over to my Threadbare Theory blog on Babble (right, right, I've been meaning to tell you about that)  and check out the music video Grey and Quinn recorded with Maguire!

It's so worth it, I swear. They wrote and performed it. Absolutely killer hilarious.

Go!

And then, I promise, I'll tell you all about how the Babble blog came about soon.

Seriously. Go!

(comments closed because you shouldn't even still be here! go! you can comment over there!)

PS- Be sure to click the Facebook "Like" button in the top right of the Threadbare Theory post (near the comment + tweet counts) so more people can see this. I'm so proud, I can't even tell you. It's so much fun to show the boys the comments!

PPS- Still not convinced? First, you are killing me. Second, it also includes a ridiculously awesome Old Navy coupon because they made the video possible. Third, we're talking about rapping elementary school kids. It's very Muddy Waters circa Jay-Z. Culture, people! ;)

Do What You're Doing While You're Doing It

I love these faces. These are the faces of my favorite people and they are all conveying the same message:

Turn that thing off and pay attention to me!

We all do it. We get so focused on something that the world falls away. Then you look up to see pleading eyes punctuated with a question, "Did you hear me?" Odds are, no, I didn't hear you. I didn't even realize you were in the room.

Grey kills me. Since he was four, he has said, "Mom, look me in the eyes." when I'm not paying attention. He hasn't bought the "Give me one more minute…" line for quite a while. Iris grabs my face and pulls me to her eyes. Soft but firm little touch. Tiny little hands that won't be tiny for long. Quinn is already seven. I have no idea how that happened. Sometimes the look in his eyes suggests he's already given up on my paying attention on-cue.

I wake up at night and worry that I haven't looked them in the eyes enough.

I wake up at night full of guilt, crawl into bed with them and plead silent promises to their sleeping selves that I'll do better.

I wake up in the morning and nothing changes. My inbox still has over 9,000 unread messages. My to-do list has not done itself. Deadlines still claw and kick or shrivel up and shoot me dirty looks. 

Before I left for BlogHer last month, I read this line in Parents Magazine:

Do what you're doing
while you're doing it.

That single line brought me immeasurable peace. I was stressed out heading into the conference because I was trying to do too many things at once. So much was waking me up at night, none of which I would be able to address while at the conference and all of which I would continue to allow to distract me. No amount of beautiful scenery would keep me from fretting about what I needed to do, what I was not doing, and who I was disappointing.

That line allowed me to be in the moment. Do only what I was doing, while I was doing it. It was gorgeous.

Since returning home, I've struggled to remember that line.

Hallmark is a sponsor of VelveteenMind.com through the end of the year and offered my fellow campaign writers and me a challenge: Commit to taking one day off. 

They called it a "Blog Out," during which we would identify one thing that tends to be a time-suck or distraction, something that keeps us from giving our family or friends our full attention. After the day off, we would consider how that undivided commitment to attention could go on to inspire us to "pause more often and enjoy the any day moments." Very much in keeping with our campaign's underlying theme: Life Is A Special Occasion.

Ah. Aaaahhh. Yes. For me, the most powerful distraction is the computer or anything connected to email or social media. Walking away from it is typically not an act I struggle with, but I have most definitely been struggling lately. 

So I turned off the computers. Disabled the Internet on the iPad and iPod Touch. Disconnected the 3G signal on my phone. 

Let the world fall away. I have faces to touch and eyes to hold steady.

We watched movies. We played games. We curled up in bed. We held hands and hugged and good-grief-Mom-enough-already snuggled. My goal was to oversaturate my three children with love. My mind was in the moment, focused on them, relaxed and free.

They are my world. When everything else is over, done, disconnected, deleted… they are my world.

Heading back from a dinner out, Grey started talking from the backseat, seemingly mid-conversation. "Mom, before I was born, when I was in Heaven, I could see you walking around all by yourself. Without me and before you had Quinn or even Dad. I decided you needed me to be your kid so I picked you."

I choke up just remembering that. I believe him.

Particularly because he followed it with, "And so I came down and you pooped me out and I was your baby."

Yep. Pretty much just like that.

These children? They are what I'm doing right now. They are what I've always been doing, even before I knew it.
They have always known. Let them always know. 

• • •

Hallmark is a sponsor of VelveteenMind.com through the end of 2011. 
Sign up for their newsletter for discounts and tips on how you can celebrate everyday moments as a special occasion. Did I mention discounts?
Opinions are always my own, usually long-founded and stubborn.  ;)

Do visit Life Is A Special Occasion and scroll down to the bottom of the page to "Featured Bloggers" to read more stories from the campaign's writers.

• • •

 

  Don't miss an update! Free delivery of new posts via email (recommended) or feed reader.

Follow me on Twitter!  |    Like Velveteen Mind on Facebook  |  

Subscribe to Velveteen Mind on or