Christmas Festivites

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Originally uploaded by amandajaynecarmichael

Oh I have been so busy eating mince pies, drinking mulled wine and enjoying the boy and I hosting Christmas for our London family plus the boy's parents. It has been super lovely though I wish a few of my special people were added to the mix. Now I am enjoying the nowhere days rolling into each other not doing much and not even knowing what day of the week it is.

moving commuting off the hobby list

for the last 20 months I have been travelling from my home in North London to Bromley in Kent for work. On average this takes about 1hr 25mins. With less than a week to go at my current workplace I am smelling the closeness of the end of an era. Commuting is something you become used to though I never quite got over the amount time in my life that it takes up. The hardest thing is finishing late at night and then not arriving home until after 9 at night and the isolation of not really being able to do much during the week because of the time it takes to get places.

there have been good times commuting I have watched movies, tv series, TED talks, listened to podcasts, read books, sketched, slept, zoned out, photographed, drank alot of coffee and listened to music. And many bad times, where I am stuck tunnels on trains, cold, hungry, late and just wishing I could beat work or at home rather than in train or waiting on a platform. This is especially the case if you are a little unwell or tired it feels like you are climbing a mountain just to get to work.


i am happy to be saying goodbye to the commute and scratching it of my hobby list and gaining back 2 hours a day (new job 30mins travel time). Respect too all those who continue to commute and it is more than 20months of their life, may the travel gods be with you. For me it is farewell commuting and hello time!

i wanna be like Nathalie

thanks to Mati Rose who has a lovely diary that I follow i discovered Nathalie Lete and her magical creations and video.

check out the little video of her painting in Japan.

for some fun and check out Nathalie's fab website. I wanna be like Nathalie a french lady living in Paris and making wonderful creations!

Who said clowns were happy?

Sad Clown
Originally uploaded by ::big daddy k::

This lovely photo deserves some blog space. Discovered on my new little habit of Flickr i had to share. Most of my weekend that is what my insides were saying. x

Photo taken by Daddy K

sewing my way out of the blues

saturday i got hit by the blues truck, I felt it coming for a little while but yesterday I was smack bang in the blues. It was the sadness that hits you for no particular reason in a way that takes your breath away. It was one of those wrenching moments where I feel my most lonely in London where I want my peeps, Sydney feels the furthest place in the globe (well it is almost). So I went into my creative den to paint but actually found myself sewing. Taking some old clothing and doing some cutting and stitching which has led to a revamped cardigan and an old t-shirt getting stitched. The tee is still a work in progress and for the first time ever the splendidly imperfect girl is being stitched. A little bit of needle magic a lovely Sunday with the boy eating cheesecake and visiting my dream business and I am climbing my way out of the blues.

A unicorn in London

Originally uploaded by amandajaynecarmichael

i discovered a unicorn in london, in a place filled with snow. It always adds to the magic of Regent St to find this sort of magic.

new beginnings, being so brand new

what i love about new jobs, new years and new things is that you have an opportunity to be so brand new. The opportunity to be conscious to make decisions with a little less sureness with an extra moment of space to do it differently or in a new way. Yesterday I did the first day at my fab new place of work and I want to embrace this opportunity. I am making more space for breathing and in those breathes I am hoping to be able to reach for those new spaces. A few moments during the day I did go into some mild panic as I felt the over riding responsibility to sort it all out straight away, my over responsibility kicks in which is super ridiculous as it is before I even officially start. This is a old habit, a deep wiring in my brain and I am going to create some new paths.

i have a deeply held and treasured belief that we all have the opportunity to change, not that it is easy. I do believe we can have a big impact on our life and the way in grows and changes if we keep conscious. Some habits will be a lifetime challenge, life might throw us million of reasons not to be different, or fortune may fall far from our path and yet we still have the power to enjoy and the great life we do have.

i love reading the research about brain stuff where studies are done and how we can change and grow new paths, it is great evidence for me. Reflecting of newness and and opportunity I guess that is why I love change. Somehow I was given the most incredible gift the voice that says I will be OK no matter what happens and if I try I can make a difference. It far from means that I haven't seen horrible things or had a perfect life because that is far from my experience but somehow I have come out with a precious gift.

my love for Battersea power station

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Originally uploaded by amandajaynecarmichael

this building has a big place in my heart. I don't know why or how but it is there. I have many photos, at many angles with many cameras. A gift and a joy of London. Maybe one day when they build the flats inside or around if that is what they will do it will be different I hope it doesn't become to perfect. I love it's semi ruin state something so imperfectly beautiful.

Oh i must get back to my sketchbook

Geneva sketch 1
Originally uploaded by amandajaynecarmichael

with discipline comes habit, with habit comes creative reward. Frequent sketchbook practice brings reward I just need to remember. Back to discipline I guess. xx

zumi obsession on a monday

i know I am obsessed with the zumi but it did so well today on this melancholy monday.
there is always more melancholy on flickr

school trip to Anish Kapoor

yesterday I was a trip with my art class to Anish Kapoor exhibition in London. It is the second time I have been as I visited with TJ a month ago. It was the first school trip I have been on years and it is was lots of fun, especially with lovely people from class, great conversation, coffee and fun art.

I was naughty in the visit in that the Zumi just accidentally took some photos. I have been playing with them a little. The Zumi is certainly getting a work out and I have enjoyed playing with the images and my love of the silhouette.

If you want to check out more about the interesting Anish Kapoor and his red wax the RA has some good content. What I took away from the exhibition was the notion of performance and experience within a show. I appreciated as a human you interacting with the sculptures and that it defined your experience, and I liked that it would be totally different to another human. The other aspect I loved is that the pieces well the ones with lots of gooey red wax evolved over the exhibition and were different from the first time I visited.

p.s. you can't help but like a exhibition that has a canon that explodes with red wax. Check out the live webcam video if you won't be in London soon.

commuting and workin in Bromley

so my first week of the zumi and I have taken over 600 photos, yes i have been snap happy. So I am going to share some photos that pretty much some up commuting to Bromley Kent to work.

I am loving the fun and delight the lovely little snapper is bringing me whether the images are the best or not. It is also teaching me to see the beauty in the ordinary things that are in my world.

Here are a few images with the rest of my day adventure via Flickr.







see my photo journey of a day commuting

a new friend

oh I have a new friend and it is very exciting. All the way from America(well designed in Japan, made in China and sold in the USA) it is the Zumi camera. A crazy little white camera with a bumble bee. Purchased from photojojo a great website for all photography fans. I discovered this delight on Karen Michel's blog with this photo

It is a digital version of the lomography concept. It had me at hello and within an hour of the battery being slipped in I have snapped 100 crazy distorted photos and a video on the tube. Beware I have another way to make images and it is crazy and splendidly imperfect and not so expensive with the printing. I even what photos of me with the camera, ok I know I am now scary.


UPDATE: The boy is not a fan at all of this crazy little camera but true love listens to no one.

london moments

three of the few images that turned out from the Diana F+ and the London photo adventure last Sunday. The images feel like pictures of my experience of London, my London. Not sure if they will go any further as images, but interesting all the same.

where have i been?

i have only small pathetic human excuses for not writing on my blog. I am determined to break the drought push through my procrastination to do something I enjoy. When procrastination takes over on certain aspects of my life I am always shocked how powerful it can be, how it can keep me away from fun aspects of my life.


life lately has been full of many funs things and a few lows. I have been shoving art in all the crevices of my life, the sketchbook has a life at the moment so full it will soon be impossible to close. In the evening I do some making, something even int he morning, hours on the weekend then art school and an exhibition and my life feels wonderful and brimming with it.

life in general has been:
*Beautiful autumn, see my little experiment above with my Diana F+ and slide film.
*Filling my sketchbook with tube pictures and crazy experimental variations
*Going to art school
*Drinking lots of coffee(nothing unusual about this)
*Spending a lovely weekend with Karen
*Dreaming of new world and new options for the work I want to do
*Going 'live' at my day job with my project
*Seeing Anish Kapoor, John Baldessari, Futurism, new hang of Tate Modern
*Fun photo adventure day with Paul, Jasper and Lawrence - must do this more!
*Visiting the lovely new Anthropologie store
*Drinking Starbucks Red Cups (Christmas drinks are always good and I don't care what you say - Toffee Nut Latte, Dark Cherry Mocha, Gingerbread Latte)
*Wishing for the people I love to have their dreams come true, well at least a few baby steps towards them
*Discovering my new fav sushi place

I promise I will be back real soon.
x

lovely surprises

I have had a lovely weekend full of surprises, Karen had a trip to London with work so I spent 36hours hanging out and catching up. After starting the weekend with sushi and sake and art school Saturday it felt like an amazing london weekend full of goodness.

After leaving Karen at the hotel for her trip home, someone left me some heart on the tube, picture above.

I am now busily focused on catching up my project from leaving art school early, a 3D object that can fold into my sketch book. This combined with my day job project that has 'd' day this wednesday has reduced my time for creativity, so hopefully things will calm down this week and I will do some more blogging and making.

Oh well, I am happy all the same. x

ordinarily lovely london weekend

my weekend has been and lovely, full of delightful london ordinariness. This weekend has included: a cider at the pub with friends; watching The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus(very average film but beautiful visually); yum Japanese for dinner; lunch and coffee at Borough Markets; Tate Modern with Jasper; dinner at Paul and Jaspers's; all Sunday lazing with the boy; and then dinner with Brett and TJ to top it off. It is when life is full of such simple wonderfulness that I realise the magic of feeling content. It has been washing over me a lot lately. I have no greater achievement, no new job, no perfect relationship but somehow I have personally reached a point of being satisfied. No yearning for something other that what I have, where I am or what I am doing. (Well wanting London to be geographically closer to Oz to see my peeps doesn't count).

I am actually happy and the happiness is growing. I could never have imagined such a life and my contentment at such happiness in the ordinariness. I always had plans for life to be grand, when actually my dream of a happy life comes from the opposite direction.

now words left

not proud of my homeland

it is not very often I say that I am not proud of my homeland Australia. But tonight as I write this I feel ashamed of the actions of Australians. It reminds me of how closed minded and racist Australia can be. Nobody is perfect but bad bad TV is no excuse. Between Hey Hey Its Saturday and on Danni Minouge of UK's X Factor we really should hide away for the week as the world sees a very ugly side of Australia.

i have been contemplating in my creative search if I want to explore my Australian identity, is there something I want to say about our horrible human rights issues, what can I say that is of any value? It is so important to me and so much easier to see when you are living in a foreign land not plagued by the blinders of cultural values. Being able to see values as if there were buildings to investigate, see the bricks and structure for all the beauty and ugliness, able to explore in a way that I didn't know how when I lived there. This ugliness is bringing it to the top of my conscious, to be considered again.

on a personal note can someone do something decent(that doesn't include sport) that makes me proud again, I miss the home land of my imagination my rose coloured memory. Please someone do something so I can stand tall again, even if only for a little while.

finding things that make you smile

places on the interweb that make me happy even for a moment:

tiny ballerinas

an amazing relationship

a new pet


a lovely blog from aus

apple pie

a lovely girl fashion blog

anthropolgie opening soon in London

blogs of people who inspire me to live my dream life
hazel dooney
Karen Michel
inside a black apple
andrea scher
kelly rae roberts
shutter sisters - picture hope

newly discovered artists that inspire me
mark dion
kiki smith
marlene dumas
cecily brown
nancy spero
chris olifi

to happy sundays
x