The Thread

 Kerry Pendergrast

We lost a unique multi-talented creative spirit in Ubud this week. Kerry Pendergrast, an artist, poet, singer, mother and wife left us and the planet unexpectedly. As I thought about Kerry today, I remembered that in the twenty or so years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone.

Her bawdy earthy powerful voice entertained us with song, while her delicate pastels layered with vibrant colors turned simple landscapes into sparkling gems. She also painted in oils, acrylics, watercolors and did lively line drawings. Our community is shaken by this loss, but her creativity lives on in the art work she produced. She will continue to inspire.

"Temple at Tengkulak" by Kerry Pendergrast

Creativity. It comes from beyond us and continues without us. It’s a thread that connects one artist to another one generation to those in front and behind it. To be radically connected is a gift without equal. And when one is flowing with it, being swept along in the current, something magical happens.  All time stops, all troubles disappear, and there is only This.

I feel such gratitude to be able to express what comes through me. It feeds on itself and gathers momentum the more I open to it. I have in front of me as I write a collection of our latest designs in wood, bone, mammoth tusk, lapis and opal. Some pieces are works in progress others are complete and waiting to be strung into necklaces, set into silver as pins, simply put on a cable or readied for stock for Tucson, coming up at the beginning of February.

Work in Progress

All this creativity in a heap on the table inspires me to push on and delve deeper into the well.  And I feel intense gratitude that I’ve been able to live the whole of my adult life doing this work in whatever medium inspires in the moment.

Kerry also had a creative life and lived her life creatively. Her legacy will live beyond her physical presence through her work and her two beautiful children, although I’ll miss her on the dance floor boogying by herself or with a partner, male or female. 

You can see more of Kerry's work here: http://www.age.jp/~pranoto/kerry/pastel/014.html

The Heart Smile

My Painting Table

Sometimes I’m sitting in my painting studio (as opposed to my beading studio) and my heart starts smiling. No really, I can feel it in my chest - a sort of expansion that goes beyond ribs and muscle and skin.  This deep down connection with creativity is like anticipation that something joyful is about to happen. This also happens in the beading studio but I share that with my assistant and am rarely there alone. This ‘heart smile’ comes with solitude.

I see artist’s studios as sacred spaces.  Like Merlin we conjure up the unknown and bring it into this world in whatever medium we work, whether it’s painting, drawing, sculpture, music, dance, writing, or other creative pursuits.  Time disappears, we step away, and magic happens through us.  

I used to need my studio to be neat. In fact that need could overtake the desire to create. It became an excuse to not face my fear of blank white paper.  It was a buffer between my desire to get my vision out through my hands with paints or pencils or pastels onto the art paper and the actual doing of it, which was often scary.  What if I can’t do it? What if I’ve lost the ability? What if I create crap? Or worse - What if I waste time?

Now with less hours available to be in either studio - the business of  selling jewelry takes up more time than the doing - the neat nick has stepped back. That is until my work table is just too crowded to use and I have to call her back.

Better Call In the Neat Nick!

Today the ‘heart smile’ came as I opened the door to my home/office after a two hour session in the painting studio.  I just felt happy!  I’d started mixing new colors - colors I have rarely used and it was thrilling. 

If you’ve been reading this blog you know my new medium is carved bone - carvings I design and have carved by my team of inspired and expert Balinese carvers. I then apply color to them.  It took over a year of research but I’ve finally found the type of paints to use to get the feeling I envision.

Today I mixed violet and gamboge yellow in various proportions to get colors that tickled me - made me joyous.  That joy now enhances a sea horse and I can even see the beads that will go with him!  Ah the ‘heart smile’ again or is that a grin?

Recycling Art

My husband, Bob, is in late stage Alzheimer’s. He’s cared for by four Balinese men in a cottage not far from my house.  He usually eats facing a wall instead of out into the garden because of the way his table is situated.  This had been bothering me for awhile. I wanted him to have something to look at when he eats since he’s now fed, having lost the ability to do it himself.

I have some serigraphs made long ago (these are original artist’s hand made prints) and had brought some here to Bali to cut in half for painting on the unused side.  Two survived the dissection and as of a week ago one now graces Bob’s dining wall. 

I wondered if he would even notice the print entitled, “The Mountains Admiring the Clouds”, with mountains shaped like faces looking at clouds shaped like animals and people. When I look at it now I shutter at my choice of colors for this piece created in 1980.  It’s too happy, too bright, too innocent, and not the way I would paint it today with a more sophisticated palette and a different vision.

When I stopped in to see Bob yesterday, the caregiver was feeding him. Bob was intently studying the new art work on the wall. He talked about it as though the characters were alive and he was surprised to hear that I had created it.  During the time I was with him he wouldn’t let me turn his wheelchair to face the garden. He was fascinated by the art piece.

"The Mountains Admiring the Clouds"

“Where’s the fish?” he asked. I honestly hadn’t really looked at the serigraph in years. After studying it I found a fish in the clouds, “There it is Bob. It’s an angel fish.”  “Who’s that woman?” he asked pointing to a female profile emerging from a unicorn’s tail. He asked lots of questions which mostly I didn’t understand. A lot of what Bob says makes little sense these days plus he speaks very softly. 

I left Bob’s house thrilled to know this discarded work of mine is doing some good, is brightening my husbands life, and giving him something to talk about. It’s peculiar as an artist, that often pieces I don’t like for one reason or another still speak to someone else. It’s as though they have a life of their own.  And this piece with it’s garish colors and simplistic theme is no exception. It speaks to Bob and its a way in, to connect with him again.

I have many prints left from this addition plus two other editions of other themes and all three share the qualities of innocence and simplicity.  I’ve wondered what to do with them since I’m not in the business of selling two dimensional art any longer.  Perhaps I can donate them to nursing homes, hospitals, and schools where they can be used to inspire youth and touch hearts fenced in by age and disease.  That’s all I ever wanted from my work - to touch people’s hearts.   

A Special Order

I’ve been away for almost a month having a real vacation in California with my sister- eating oysters and drinking Prosecco to my heart’s content.  I thought I’d continue to write my blogs but of course vacation mentality grabbed hold and I never seemed to find the inspiration. 

Marigold Buddha with Koi

Home now in lovely Bali, I’m surrounded by a luxurious garden and my rainbow of koi fish flashing about the pond. I arrived to flower petal hearts on the doormat and vases bulging with white roses, chrysanthemums and night jasmine placed around the house. The garden Buddha had been polished and festooned with marigolds for the occasion.  

My staff  has always taken good care of me but still after all these years it’s a surprise to be so welcomed. I love to go away and see new places or revisit old favorites and I love to come home - who wouldn’t with a welcome like this?

In California I’d had a few errands to run before vacation mentality got too strong. One was to mail a very special order. Seven months before I’d received this e-mail:

I hope you can help me! A year ago my husband bought me..as a wedding gift, a goddess necklace. It was a beautifully carved fossilized ivory goddess about 2 and a half inches long. It was a soft brownish color.The beads were lapis, ivory and gold (Id rather have silver). It came unclasped when I was wearing it and I LOST it...I cried for weeks as it was perfectly ME and such a loving gift. I just thought after a YEAR to try to find you! Duh.....I lost it a week after my mother died so I’m all tied up about this whole thing. Could you possibly make me another one?

-Sally

I love a challenge like this. And to do a special piece just for the person who'll wear it, gets my creativity thrashing, often leaving sleep out of reach.  Sally and I had many exchanges over the seven months it took to recreate her necklace.  I did several carvings trying to get the right color and feel.  I also did a few beading designs, emailing photos to her until we got just the perfect color and composition for the Goddess.

When Sally received her necklace she emailed immediately:

One Beading Idea

OH! I got the goddess this morning! SHE is gorgeous. I like the colors even better than the first one. This goddess is perfect. And you have improved the clasp. This one will NEVER fall off.

This arrived just in time for our Third Anniversary and it was a Wedding gift to me in the first place. Thank you SO MUCH>>>and keep me on your mailing list. please.

LOVE Sally

This is one of the reasons why I love my work. It feels like a gift and an honor to bring joy and beauty into someone’s life. These opportunities don’t come frequently but when they do and when they click, as this one did, I’m ultra-inspired to keep going, keep creating (as though I had a choice) and to be even more thankful for the life I lead. 

Thank you, Sally!

Treasures

I’m on vacation in northern California having quality time with my sister. We seem to be eating our way through the area, laughing, and having deep bonding.  We toast the memory of our mother and know she would love to be with us sharing in these good times.

I was here the same time last year for a wedding and to empty out and get rid of my storage. It was a painful process. (You can read about that at : http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2012/10/benediction.html). 

This year I’m going through the few things I salvaged and stored at my sister’s house. One of those is a set of ten large flat art drawers.  Last week I tackled the first five.  Today I started on the sixth. 

As I went through the drawings, preliminaries for watercolor paintings I’d done and sold over twenty-five years ago, a swirl of emotions over took me and soon tears were cascading down my checks. I sat back to sort out these emotions as colorful and varied as my paintings were.  These artworks were all done during my marriage, to John, an artist in his own right. The memoires of that life have grown thin leaving a vague otherworldly sensation.

But the drawings surprised me in their quality of execution – I wondered, “Who did these? They seemed to be from a distant me that I could hardly remember - a time of innocence and naiveté and youth of spirit.”

I wondered if I painted such happy paintings because I projected that as my life.  Of course in reality I dealt with fear, trepidation and self-consciousness – all aspects that have mellowed with maturity, aspects that don’t plague me as they did in my 20’s and 30’s. I was surprised at how much I liked these pieces and how they made me feel – happy as well as nostalgic.  And then something new stated to take wing.

I can see this as a pendent

If you’ve been reading this Blog you know I’ve been experimenting with coloring bone.  I see this as a coming back around to painting while still making jewelry. Looking through my old drawings I started to see possibilities for carvings that tell a story as my paintings did plus an excuse (as though I need one) to use color once again.

There were several images in these old drawings that could become pieces of jewelry. It’s strange to be inspired by my own inspiration. I usually look outside for that.

Tomorrow I’ll put music on, open the garage door for more light and pull out drawer number seven. I wonder what treasures it (and the other not yet opened drawers) hold for me.  What new inspirations might carry me off on new adventures.

Break Through!

I’ve finally found a product that works to color bone carvings as I’ve envisioned for over two years. It’s waterproof and lets the light of the bone shine through just like the paper's white does in my watercolor paintings.

I am basically a painter. When I was studying for my BA in Art - oh so many years ago - I ended up painting on my hand built ceramic sculptures.  I eventually chucked the ceramics and moved on to paper which thrilled me for years - and still does when I find time to use it. Painting on paper was more immediate than having to wait to fire the ceramics and hope with crossed fingers that it wouldn’t crack or the colors change dramatically.

Now I’m painting on bone. What a departure! And one I couldn’t have imagined without a crystal ball just a couple of years ago. However, I feel a bit hemmed in by the small assortment of colors I have after purchasing everything I could find in the local art store. I have no yellow or true red. So it’s on to Google Search for another source. 

It was such a thrill to have this click into place. I've been craving color in my mammoth jewelry which I’ve gotten using semi precious stone beads.  I still love the mammoth tusk and jet carvings but my muse is demanding something new. I knew abstractly what I wanted but didn’t have a concrete vision. That took time to come into focus and then ‘bang!’ it hit me that I wanted a watercolor look on the carvings.

The creative process is so exciting!  I love how stepping out of the way let’s the magic in - magic you couldn’t orchestrate on your own.  And often stepping out of the way is automatic - you don’t even realize you are doing it! 

Wings in Living Color!

 

I started posting about this process in July. At the time the colors I used sat opaquely the surface of the bone. Here's the entry I wrote and a photo of my early attempts:

http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2013/07/back-in-saddle.html

 

  

A Gift

I had hoped my book would be a instant wild success.  I’ve poured my heart, soul and energy into it for four years and was ready to send it on it’s merry way. Then a publisher friend had his editor read it and sent me a list of criticisms, detailing how to improve it.  I knew in my heart what he wrote was right but still it’s a blow to the ego. I felt so mediocre.

Now in the light of a new day I think, what a gift - to be told just what to do to make it work.  There were some positives in the critique as well but isn’t it strange how our minds gloss over the pats-on-the-back to focus on the criticisms?  I’ve realized minds are like that - they dwell on the negative, perhaps as a form of preservation and protection. If you wait instead of reacting to that initial response, a new more mature perspective takes root.

I'm ready to tackle this diversion from what I thought the road ahead would look like. There will be new scenery and leaning and hopefully more barriers broken as I traverse the land of book editors.  I need someone who can be ruthless but compassionate as we need to cut about a quarter of the words.

The current challenge is to find someone who believes in my book and with whom I’ll have a rapport to create a much better work - to push beyond what it is now to something greater.  I have an appointment with a friend who does this professionally. We’ll see if we can work together and if not I’ll be back on the hunt for the right person.

Found on Pinterest

That seems like a gargantuan task but one that must be done step by step. Making a list of what I want in an editor would be a place to start. Got any ideas, hints, or do you know of a good professional editor? Let me know if you do. 

In the meantime I content myself with creating new necklace designs and continuing in my experiments to color bone.

I wish you Happy Creating in whatever medium or mediums you use!

Metal Things

Here in Bali,Tumpuk Landup is a day that celebrates everything metal. Automobiles and motorbikes are embellished with hand-woven palm leaf plaits attached to their hoods and handlebars. Tools, electric and manual, and knives including the ceremonial kris, are given a good waft of sandalwood incense and a dose of holy water to cleanse and acknowledge the spirits inherent within. 

All Dressed Up 

 

I shudder as the matriarch of our Balinese family raises her weathered hand, a flower drenched in holy water held delicately between two gnarled fingers. She flicks the blossom, breathes out her ancient prayers, while liberally sprinkling the computer and printer three times. I cross my fingers that the blossom-studded offerings stuck with burning incense will stay put. 

Honoring the Flex Shaft 

In the workshop the electric flex shaft, used for making carvings and setting stones, seems miniaturized next to three large platters filled with cakes, a splayed crisply roasted chicken, fresh fruits, crunchy rice snacks and a rainbow of flower petals. This is a gift to the flex shaft’s spirit and a prayer that he’ll protect everyone you uses the tool.

Knives and Kris'

All the knives of the house are cleaned and gathered together along with the garden tools. They also have a special homage while the band saw at the end of the workbench sports an intricately woven palm leaf offering unlike any of the others. 

Band Saw Pretty

My Lovely Stove

The kitchen does not go unnoticed. A simple pinwheel of flowers placed there, seems to my mind, too small for the enormous pleasure my oven gives me and the many friends who dine at our table. As I turn to go out I notice the fridge has an offering balanced on its top corner edge. No metal that could cause problems to the household is exempt from being honored on this day.

Ancient and adaptable Bali merges with the modern world while retaining its unique rituals. How could this culture not influence us artists, musicians, and writers? The air breathes creativity infusing us with its electrons, edging us forward to bring life to new ideas, visions and dreams. I go to my beading table and put together a new bracelet, humming with the spirit of the place.

Ready to Launch

I’ve just sent my book off to a publisher friend to see if it is publishable. I’ve been working on “Piece by Piece - Bali Dreams, Love and the Land of Alzheimer’s” for almost four years. It’s been through two edits and countless re reads trying to seek out misspellings and gross punctuation errors.  I think the words conspire while I sleep to put commas where they shouldn’t be and to veil words so spell check can’t find them.

I’m ready to launch this effort to free up some time for other creative pursuits. The first time I thought I’d finished it, I felt like I’d lost a friend, like I was grieving. See my blog post on this at: 

http://susan-tereba.blogspot.com/2012/04/empty-spot.html

But this time it feels like it’s ready to leave home. I know there will be a lot of work to do to promote it when it finally gets published but the creative part is done. Now it’ll be the business of getting published leading me on and then the business of marketing.

Hand Painted Bone with Jasper

In the jewelry arena I showed some of my experiments of hand colored bone carvings to a collector and friend. She thought they were so nice she bought a pair of the earrings. That inspires and motivates me to get back to my experiments with color.  As much as I love our mammoth tusk carvings, I adore color.  I'm a painter after all!

In the meantime I have my fingers crossed that “Piece by Piece” will be well received and a constructive critique comes out of this professional reading.  I’m already dreaming of the next book - a cookbook with stories.

Creativity is my life and I don’t really care how it expresses itself just so it does.

How does creativity express itself for you? How does it feed you?

Dancing with Bits of Time

Sometimes it feels like life snatches away the creative moment.  I'm filled with inspiration and great longing to transform this into in-hand creations. Lately this strong urge seems to get usurped by other 'more important' issues.

Then I wonder if these are also part of the process - that it's like a boiling pot. The food will be done when it's done. Carrots take longer than zucchini.  And maybe some ideas, in whatever medium you are using, need their own time with interruptions part of that process. 

There's a delicate line between gestation and procrastination and I so don't want to fall prey to the latter, and at the same time, I want to honor the former.  At the moment I'm dancing between bits of time working on new creations and literally taking care of business.  It seems like the computer and emails eat big chucks out the day and every night as I climb into bed I think, "Didn't I just do this?"

'Heart Song'

'Heart Song' is a new design etched out of this dance between busyness and creativity. These earrings remind me to 'keep it light' and follow life's lead. You just never know where inspiration will come from.  Five months ago in California, a waitress was serving us brunch. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her earrings.  They inspired this design produced in Bali.  That’s why we’re called “World on a String”.

Blessings

"Flexibility"

There’s a rainbow of dragonflies here in Bali. There are red ones, black and magenta, sapphire blue, metallic gold, green, and even rare white ones. For decades they’ve been an important symbol to me in both my paintings and jewelry. I’ve designed carvings of frogs with dragonflies on their backs, leaves with dragonflies and just dragonflies for earrings and necklaces.  

In the spring of 1984 I’d rented a house on the remote island of Filicudi off the coast of Sicily. I was in the middle of a painting and sensed it needed a dragonfly. I didn’t have a picture to refer to and had only a vague recollection of how they looked. I’d never seen one on the island and my attempts to draw them from memory were miserable. 

One morning during breakfast on the veranda, I was still wishing for one of these clear winged beauties when a dragonfly suddenly appeared and landed on a tall weed a foot away from me. My heart raced. With no pencil at hand, I very slowly rose and made a dash for anything I could find to draw with.

The dragonfly was still there, perched on a gently swaying stalk, as though awaiting my return. I sketched. He turned giving me another angle. I sketched again. He turned again until I had all the angles I needed. Then off he flew. I didn’t see another one during my stay on Filicudi. 

A few years ago in my Ubud home, a black velvet dragonfly buzzed around the kitchen, banging into the windows, looking for the way out. I observed him for a while and then said out loud, “Come on! Let’s go outside.” He landed on my outstretched thumb and we walked together out into the garden. In the sun he transformed into a stained glass window. His black wings had transparent olive green at the top with tiny magenta windows inset into the black. His body had mosaic patches of robin’s egg blue and a red dot behind his head. He stayed for a while until we had our fill of each other and then we said, “Good-bye”. 

These meetings with dragonflies make me stand at attention. And when the rare white one skims the koi pond at twilight I feel blessed. Blessed to live in this thriving colorful and complicated culture. Blessed to have love in my life, and blessed to be creative. 

What makes you count your blessings?

Mammoth Tusk and Sterling Silver

Lexigrams

It's Sunday - one of my favorite days of the week. Since I live in my office/studio it's the only day when there's no staff and the place is all mine.  I can stay in my night gown past 8:00 if I want - what a luxury!

I had a list of things to do but somehow it slipped through my fingers. I didn't come up with new designs, I didn't work on my bone coloring project, and I didn't do any of the many other things on the list.

Instead I got caught up in Lexigrams.  Andrea, the Peace Painter of the Andrea Smith Gallery in Sedona, Arizona (http://www.andreasmithgallery.com) recently wrote about Lexigrams. She took all the letters in her name and made phrases out of them. She didn't always use all the letters but she didn't double any letter unless there were two in her name.  She said she learned a lot about herself this way.

After cutting little squares to print each letter of my name on, I put them on the desk next to the computer. I thought I would play with them from time to time but in the end I lost an hour in the afternoon and then another. I just couldn't let this go. It had me.

As I reflect on the day, maybe I needed to give my regular creative channels a rest. Maybe this exercised my brain and opened up something new that I won't realize right away. Or maybe the creative spirit just wanted to play hooky.

Here are a few of the Lexigrams I came up with:

Art is Me

Create Human Bliss,

Sister Calm

In Heart Beams

Halt

Brush Lines,

Arise Blue Scars

Meet

Sister Luna -

Hearts Can Smile

Catch

Cherubs Steal....

In Came Art

It Amuses

Smiles

Heals

Atelier Ace!

Muses Can Be Art

Healers Can Be Mutes

Teasers Can Lie

Art is Me

``````````````

Now it's your turn.  What phrases can you make out of your name? What do these phrases say about you?

Back in the Saddle

I finally got to my painting studio for the first time since last year. I pay the rent, have it cleaned, but still I haven't opened the door to that magic room for oh so long!

Once I'm there with sketches and half finished works pinned to the wall, a rainbow of inks, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, and art book laden shelves, the creative spark ignites.  I feel almost possessed as the urgency intensifies and my fingers move through the materials putting color on what ever medium is in front of me. Color! I even thrill to test dabs on torn paper scraps - tests to see how the colors look together or overlaid. How I need color.

I love my work and the mammoth tusk carvings that I design and 'World on a String' produces. Semi precious stone beads embellish them and help me assuage that need for color. But slowly building over time, it's now not enough. I want the carvings to tell stories in hues that pull the viewer in as much as the detail and beauty of the carving.  

This idea has been brewing for over a year, perhaps two, but it's time had not come and past attempts to use color on carvings have not been successful. It's easy to make them look cheap or plastic like. I'm inspired by old inked Chinese ivory carvings and Eskimo scrimshaw but still I want something different.

I didn't know what that "different" was until this spring while in the States. One evening I passed a store window with hand-made hand-painted furniture on display. I said to my partner, "This is what I want my carvings to look like!"  Finally I had a solid idea of the look I was after.

A Start

I collect 'ideas and inspirations' like I collect beads and components for my jewelry. Some times they sit unnoticed for a very long time until suddenly they unveil themselves and I know just how to use them.

So this project in progress still has much work left to do. While I'm happy with the result so far, I feel I haven't yet found the right color medium. It's back to the art store to try some new bottles or tubes and continue the experiments. I'll keep you posted and if anyone out there has an idea for coloring bone please let me know.

Happy Creating!

The Unexpected

I've been in Bangkok on a family medical emergency that couldn't be dealt with here in Bali, so please excuse my lack of posts.

It's good to be home in the lush garden that surrounds our small comfy house.  I was greeted by flower filled vases in the bedroom, on the verandah, and in the bathroom. I felt so welcomed and nurtured.

And now it's time to get down to creating once again and 'stamping out small fires' that are part and parcel of being self employed.  I look forward to giving voice to the creative spirit with the same anticipation as greeting a lover.

Bangkok's Buddhas and Kuan Yins are always a source of inspiration for me as is the Thai sense of style.  Thais are the Italians of Asia with their refined sense of line and harmony.  Something inside me gets tickled by their house wares and furniture even though it has nothing to do with jewelry.

Arun's Cord with Bear Head

In the amulet market along the Chao Phraya River, inspiration came calling in unexpected ways. One tattooed man, Arun, was selling his handmade knotted cords that were perfect to embellish with a carving, especially for men.  I ordered ten and picked them up the next day.

Arun was thrilled. In gratitude his niece gave my partner and I each an amulet of dusty white ceramic material with a framed seated Buddha image thinly impressed into the surface. She first held them in her hands in ‘Namaste’ fashion, infusing them with prayers for good luck.  

This is a rare occurrence. My experience with sellers in Thailand over the last twenty-six years is that they are there to sell and not connect - probably figuring they'll never see me again so why spend the energy. This small gesture came from the Arun’s nieces' heart and touched ours.

Another man, busy on his cell phone, let me photograph an elephant necklace he was wearing. We carve a lot of elephants but this one had something different about it and really caught my eye as well as my lens.  Of course I'll do something completely different with the idea. Inspiration finds you where it will.

It's good to be home now, surrounded by those I‘m close to, head full of ideas, and once again feeling so much gratitude to have work I love.

Everyone's Talking About It!

Long time friend, Victoria, turned me on to Pinterest while someone else showed me how to use it. As a visual person,  I find it's an exciting and useful tool to enhance creativity. It's more intuitive and better than bookmarking sites I find, which I rarely refer to again anyway.

Evening Buddha From ' Suz World' Board

You make 'Boards' (think bulletin board) to organize photos or visuals you either upload from your computer or from the Internet to 'Pin' to a board.  For instance I have Boards for 'Color', 'Recipes', and 'Blogging', to name a few.  I even have a joint board with Victoria that we use to 'Pin' things we think the other would like. 

The Boards are available for the public to see and I believe you can  have as many as you want. You are also allowed three boards that remain private - for your eyes only unless you allow another person to see it. 

Bathroom Orchid from Suz World Board

I'm all for using whatever tools are available to enhance our creativity. An idea can spring from anywhere and Pinterest is one of those anywheres. 

Warning though:  You can lose hours gathering inspiration.  Best not to have any pressing appointments!

To view my Pinterest Boards:  http://pinterest.com/suzworld2/

And if you have any boards you think I'd like to see please let me know!