Thanks to BlissChick!!

I'm not sure if I have written about my "burned forever in my memory horrific art experience" story here or not, but it is relevant for a couple of reasons - it is the reason that I am writing this THANK YOU post to BlissChick (Christine) and because you may notice a change in the blog here because of all of this.

When I was a young child, I was in LOVE with fluorescent crayons and bright colors. For me, the brighter, the better. I wonder about that sometimes. I think the colors soothe me, but for other people, colors have an opposite affect. Anyway, I colored EVERYTHING with those crayons. I wanted everything to be as bright and colorful as what I had in my imagination.  Even my nightmares were "multicolored" which is what my parents called my penchant for colorful items, pictures, clothes, etc.

When I went to kindergarten or first grade(1970-71), I colored everything in strips. It was important to ensure that all the colors were included in an orderly fashion. Around Christmas time one of those years (I think first grade), we were given Santas to colore. They were those FANCY ones where the arms and legs were attached with brads so that the arms and legs moved. I colored my Santa meticulously, including all the colors (you see where this is going, don't you?) up the legs of Santa to the top. Obviously, his hair was still white and his skin tone was similar to my own (pretty typical).  I proudly submitted my fine piece of art to my teacher who responded, "Santa wears a red and white suit, not one with all these colors. I'm afraid we won't be able to display your Santa for Parent's night.  Your Santa isn't colored correctly" or words to that affect. I was devastated. Not that I didn't do it right but that my Santa, whom I had worked so HARD on, would not be displayed. I was proud of the work I had done on him.  I brought my Santa home and told my mother what had happened.  Luckily, my mother is a smart woman. She loved my multi-colored Santa and told me so. Throughout all of our moves, she always made sure to keep that Santa.

There you have it - my first soul-crushing art experience. I still have that Santa somewhere. I should find him and scan him in.  This experience affected my interest and ability to produce art of any kind. I focused on writing instead.

So, how does BlissChick come into this? Well, one day, I was looking at blogs and found the "Free Wild Woman" poster I have posted here. When I followed the link to it, I landed on BlissChick's site. The poster attracted me because of the visual elements - many different images, many different colors and it was free WILD WOMEN. I love that. When I got to Christine's site, I noticed that her blog was very colorful. At first, I thought that all those colors were links to something out. More recently, I decided to explore and I realized that she uses color for all kinds of reasons AND that I could do the SAME THING on my blog. 

I have been looking for SOMETHING that would add the final visual touch to the blog. The custom photo header made me happy for a while, but what I had been looking for had something to do with COLOR.  So, in my post on Creativity Continued last week, I started the process...it was a small step, but I knew it was what I had been looking for. A way to emphasize, a way to change it up, add interest. Make my points without all caps or underlines...something different, that I don't see all blogs doing. 

So, officially, thanks to Christine at BlissChick for using color and for inspiring me to do the same.