I think it is a good day to start blogging again, wouldn’t you agree? It feels good to sit and share with you in a format that doesn’t feel like it has rules and I can just write as though I’m writing to a friend. And so … welcome! Welcome to this space where I share life that includes being an artist (photography & graphic design), wife & mom, gardening inside and outside, a little bit of homeschooling, and a tad bit of homemaking. These all make up who God made me to be and I hope to someday finally settle into the fact that I’m not one thing but many and they all work together for God’s purpose.

Let’s get into what I wanted to share today and these beautiful flowers.

In 2021, I started with a lot of passion and motivation. I created this new website, scrapped my blog of many years to start over, and switched to a new shop platform. My focus was wrong though. My focus was on sales and when those sales were not what I had hoped for I lost that motivation and passion very quickly. I’m not saying that sales are a bad thing to focus on but sales should not be what inspires me as an artist. I barely picked up my camera from July on and only documented things with my phone. I got myself into quite a funk about photography, wondering if I was walking away from it for good.

With my head spinning in January about what my path was going to be I sat down and started writing in my journal. I did a brain dump of all the things that were feeling chaotic and uncertain and started processing through them and came to this conclusion. I photograph flowers, landscapes, and what inspires me to bring joy to others and myself by sharing images/ideas/inspiration/thoughts/techniques. I do that by sharing digital images online and providing physical products. I share the other aspects of me as a graphic designer, gardener & homemaker because they contribute to my inspiration and I hope they inspire others.

This is my goal as an artist. Inspire, bring joy, and connect.

I want to focus on putting into action the ideas I have, whether they turn out good or bad. I want to explore the products that I would love to see my work created into like paper products and puzzles. I want to share the personal things that I enjoy and my family without worrying that it’s not photography or art. I want to chuck the rules that the entrepreneur world yells and just be who I am.

The images in this post are inspired by an idea that I have been thinking about for awhile. This is the first try at creating something that might be turned into a puzzle. Yikes … I said it out loud to the internet. The images that I’m focused on for this are the one’s with flowers that fill the frame so that there is color, texture, and a subject out to the edges. I have no idea where I can get custom puzzles made (at a reasonable price) or if this idea even works but I’m focused on exploring it and seeing where it leads.

And that is my goal, to explore inspiration and do it without restraint to inspire, bring joy, and connect with others.