Bigger Badder Better Than Ev-ah!

Oh my sweetums, my best beloveds… Arty Life is back!

Which means SO AM I.

Did you think I abandoned you? Ran off to Aha! Baha! with some other blog?  Oh noooo… that was all a misunderstanding. But I can see where you made that assumption. She had a great body but trust me…that was someone else in those pictures.

This is what really happened…

Once upon a time, a couple weeks ago, I had this blog. Seriously, THIS blog,  Arty Life. Imagine that! As blogs go, I suppose it was fine but like mothers everywhere I wanted MORE for my child.

I wanted her to have some direction.

Does that sound familiar? Do you remember your mother yelling saying something like that to you? Saying, “Honey do you have ANY idea what you’re going to do with your life because your father and I are not going to be supporting you when you’re 45?”

Do you remember those conversations? Someday I’ll tell you about the one I had with FirstBorn, which is a post in and of itself. What do you expect from a boy whose only career ambition was to blow shit up? Really, we’ll talk about it. Later. But not now. Now is the time to tell you the conversation I had with Arty Life.

Me: I love you Arty Life but what the hell are you doing? All those posts I’ve sweated blood over just disappear from the front page poof…just like that and are LOST FOREVER in the great dark void of the interwebs. No one knows the genius I put into them. No one knows they could be touched by greatness just by reading what I have to say. I could be influencing lives! Saving the world! Getting a book deal!!!

Arty Life: Sucks for you, doesn’t it?

Clearly she had reached the adolescent stage of her blog life.

And like adolescents everywhere she needed understanding. And a firm hand on the backend of her WordPress.

So I sat down and got to work. This is me two weeks ago when I first began tinkering around the back parts of the blog, getting way more familiar with the inner workings of WordPress than I can discuss in polite company. Well, this is what I looked like then.

Coffee

Note the calm demeanor as I sat at the computer sipping on a cuppa joe. Calm and steady. Ready to face all challenges. Focused on the task at hand.

coffee later

And this is me two weeks later, after the task at hand had it’s way with me. After the coffee worked it’s magic. After I lost all focus and my butt became one with the chair and I needed, with all my heart and soul, to get up and move it move it shake it out … DANCE BREAK!!!

Ahhhh… much better. Nothing relaxes me more than dancing and jumping out of airplanes. If you look hard enough you might find me in the video. Then again, you might not.

So after drinking too much coffee, jumping out of airplanes and rebuilding the blog, what WHAT do I have to show for my absence?

A blog you can find your way around. Or lose yourself in. A blog that has a semi-rational inner compass. So if you’re interested in, ummm…, let’s say ART, just go to the art link at the top of the page. That will take you to a menu of all kinds of art posts…imagine that!

And do check out the new home page.

But Arty Life is not just about art. It’s about life. About food and family and friends. And photography. And everything else that makes a life full. This is an ongoing process. I’m still finding my way through the maze myself, finding the right slots for back and future posts. One thing for sure, I’ll be adding MORE sections, categories and features.

Wendy's oatmeal

There will be recipes! Like Wendy’s Power Breakfast. Which is better than Wonder Woman’s magic lasso.

Leland

And new, regular features. Like a semi-weekly look at What Leland Wore.  And an expanded edition of my ever popular FaceBook digital series Ponies in the Morning. And interviews! Book reviews! How tos! Guest bloggers!

Something new every day. Oh God, I said EVERY DAY…I must be out of my freakin’ mind but until I come to my senses yes, you can count on some new Arty Life tidbit every. day.

Because Arty Life is growing up. And I’m blogging with my big girl panties now.

So wander around. Explore. Enjoy. If you have an idea for a post, a recipe or an interview shoot me an e-mail, got to fill those posts with something, y’know.

And, as always, I love to hear from you in the comments below.

 

 

 

Storm Before the Calm

You may have noticed I’ve been a little…lax about posting this last week or so. Well, there’s good reasons.

Ch-cha-cha-anges are a brewin’.

Oh my sweetums, SO MANY good things happening in Arty Life land these days! Good things! Uber good, super good absolutely freakin’ AWESOME good things!!!

This is the week ALL the construction loose ends get wrapped up in the new! improved! Studio Grande! At least the interior. The part I need to be finished so I can move in and make it my work place home.

I am SO excited!

But to get there we’re going through the storm before the calm. Oh indeed we are. You cannot walk anywhere in the house without seeing the chaos that will morph into studio orderliness.

This is what the living room looks like right now. Imagine those drawers in the studio. Loaded with art supplies in an ORDERLY manner. Sigh… I can’t wait.

I even bought drawer organizers.

I don’t have to wait much longer. This is Mr. Spouse doing manly things involving the soon to be major suck exhaust fan. The fan that will be my best friend when it comes to stinky art stuff.

The slate that will be the windowsills and firesafe back splash for encaustic land. Because building the studio is Mr. Spouse’s project. His art. And I’m not complaining. And the tiles will be beautiful splashed with beeswax, don’t you think?

While all these changes are going on in studio land, changes are going on with Arty Life too.

Oh. My. YES!!!

I’m in the process of adding a store and lots of art. You can see the progress on that if you click ‘latest art’ up on the nav bar. Still figuring some details like shipping and the boring behind the scenes stuff so it will be a couple of weeks before it’s operational. And I’ll be adding prints as well.

There will be price points for every budget.

Including FREE!

Yep, I’m going to add some freebies for download!

And that’s not all…oh no, my sweetums, not hardly…I have a BIG surprise!!!. Yes. I. Do.  But like all surprises, I CAN’T TELL YOU. Not now. You have to wait.

So to do all that, I’m taking the next week off. Off from posting, that is. I’m going to be working my tail off. Finishing the studio. Moving in. And making some MAGIC happen here in Arty Life Land. Like I said, SURPRISES!!!

So come back Monday after next (July 9) and check it all out.

I can’t wait to share it all with you!

 

Growing Pains

Arty Life is getting a makeover. Imagine that. Gonna pretty up this blog o’mine. Check out the home page. Notice anything? Like three columns now, instead of two.  And my picture on the left because…well because the whole damn leaf moved there when I switched to three columns and I was so busy trying to fix the size of the center images, so FRUSTRATED that things were behaving BADLY that I said okay, picture on the left works for me.

Sometimes design by default isn’t such a bad thing.

Why am I doing this? Because I can. And because this blog is in the early days. Still figuring things out. Still growing. But mostly because when I went live with this sucker back in October I considered it a work-in-progress. Like those layer canvases I’ve been showing you. Not a painting yet but a start.

I imagine Arty Life will go through LOTS of changes as I grow into my blogging britches.

And not just design changes.

I just finished Liv Lane’s class How to Build a Blog You Truly Love. Six weeks of discovering passion and purpose in cyberland. I’m dizzy, POSITIVELY DIZZY, trying to sort it all out.

In a good way.

So stay tuned. There. Will. Be. Changes.

In a good way.