Make each day your Masterpiece - website we love

So, as I was listening to an audiobook recently, I don't recall which one, I heard something that resonated with me. The quote was to "Make each day your masterpiece" and it really struck me, we HAVE that ability. Each morning as your alarm sounds, you get your wake-up call, the call to start your masterpiece. Do you hit the snooze button (guilty) or do you bound out of bed, feet hitting the floor with the excitement and fervor of a new puppy who has just spotted the little sunshine-yellow tennis ball. Leaping and bounding, tail wagging and ready follow where that ball may lead, no matter which direction it flies. Or, do you sloth out of bed, reluctantly dragging your feet from the warm and cozy covers?

 Once you have risen, it is time to plan your masterpiece! Oh, the options that lie before you. The medium, the texture, style, etc. Think about your medium for the day. Do you work in Acrylic, needing quick results? Or do you prefer Oils, taking longer to come to fruition, but perhaps more valuable in the long run? And your canvas, are you working on a 4"x5" canvas (living small and in fear), or are you shooting for the largest canvas available to you, something closer to 10'x20' (living in love and abundance)? Are you painting (speaking) with bright and vibrant colors, or dull muted tones? Or do you not even feel confined by a canvas? Breaking into more dimensional, and hands-on mediums of clay, or sculpture? Perhaps something that can be molded and then each day coming back to tweak a little more, something that will evolve with you?

Tomorrow as you rise from your slumber, step back, and look at your day differently, through new eyes.  What is your masterpiece for the day going to look like, and at the end of each day, when you look back, is your masterpiece worthy of the Louvre? Or are you not even proud enough to hang it in your closet?

Now realistically, not every day can be master quality, and if it isn't, can you look back at the day and know that you have mastered a new skill, learned a new technique which will make you an even more accomplished artist in the days to come?

The image above is one that I think illustrates this point well, and also is one cool site and deserves some recognition, perhaps the Louvre? OK, well maybe not, but quite impressive. Rendered images in clay, sometimes adds depth to the concept being relayed. The incorporation of the human hand into the art that gives it a different kind of breath of life. Deplastilina offers up some beautifully sculpted clay images that are truly one of a kind. Abstract and yet meaningful, I found several of them to be quite beautiful. Browse them and perhaps they will inspire your next masterpiece!

Wake up and smell the coffee? (rant warning)

So, typically I try to stay off my soap box, but this morning as I was reading Advertising Age, I became compelled. Reporting that the coffee brewing giant, Starbucks, could be in real trouble. Really, no surprise to me. Why. Two words.....free internet!

Lets take a look, over the past several years, the general public has become coffee obsessed. The specialty coffee that once was a luxury, novelty, a treat, has become the standard entitlement. While expensive, it has been that morning boost to get you moving, get your mind churning again in preparation for a long day of work.

When the economy tanks, and filling our tanks has nearly doubled, where does that cash come from. Maybe the 3-4x week mocha has now become that one per week treat again. Ouch, that has to hurt. But then, the number of individuals working from home, remote offices, or flexible offices are on the rise as well. In booking your next meeting, were do you go? Working from an office in a city which isn't where I do the bulk of my business, I find myself meeting clients in a lot of coffee shops, or restaurants. But, when your business is so closely tied to the internet, or you need to be able to check your e-mail before and after, the requirements of our meeting space are going to be influenced by a couple of factors. Space and internet services.

I venture to say that 80% of my most recent meetings have been coffee shops. Coffee shops with free internet. Of them 0% have been Starbucks for that very reason. In trots Caribou, or welcome my friends the Dunn Brothers or the herds of local coffee shops, all providing free internet services. The bonus in this is that if it is a legit business meeting, you can write off the expense of the coffee or meal, and in a slow economy writing of that little coffee addiction is looking pretty good.

So, Starbucks, wake up and smell the flavor of the coffee of your new best friend, flexible business workers with an expense budget.

Reverse Graffiti

Check out this artist, deemed a "reverse graffiti artist" he creates his art by cleaning. Creating stencils and then power washing through them, he creates a design on a wall, building, or other relatively grimy surface.

I have been working on a technique utilizing Nitric Acid on Copper to create some trees, but this is a bit different process, one of cleaning rather than oxidizing. Which lead me to think of what some other applications for this type of technique might be.

Recently all workplaces in Fargo, ND went smoke free. And perhaps this would have been a better campaign for  prior to the passing of that resolution, but you could do the same thing here as well. Work with a bar owner create a stencil of an ad, and then apply to the wall which has been covered with years of smoking residue, and then clean. This would likely work in restaurants where the use of deep fat fryers was used, removing the grease to better illustrate what you are breathing in.

I cities with a lot of pollution, perhaps you could take a plain white board, and apply white vinyl or a polyurethane over your image and then sit back and watch as the image appears due to the discoloration of the board. 

Any other thoughts? How else could the use of cleaning or the illustration of dirt in the environment be used to create art? Watch the video of this artist on Creativity.com.