because a squillion things need doing.
because my eyes have soaked in so much color lately.
because time-lapse is the most fun thing in world.
today I made this:
Prize Draw :)
Today is the last day of the TWELVTY Prize Draw!
Just sign up to my email list here and reply to the welcome email with the subject line “I’m In!” to enter and win A FREE year of TWELVTY! All that colourful loveliness! All for you!
Winners will be notified tomorrow: Saturday 25th Feb. Good luck!
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
The doors close to new members of the TWELVTY tribe at the end of Feb, so if you get lit up by color and think this is something you’d like to be a part of you have until 28 Feb to jump aboard. I don’t know if I’ll run this program again – next year I have other adventures lined up – this could be now or never!
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TWELVTY Prize Draw
This week I’m giving away TWO FREE places in TWELVTY.
TWELVTY is an adventure in color that runs all through 2017 where we explore the 12 colors of the color wheel one month at a time.
In TWELVTY you get access to a wealth of delicious color resources, exclusive videos of my creative process every week, and can join a wonderful online community of creatives. And much, muchier more! (More details here)
Want in? just sign up to my email list here and reply to the welcome email with the subject line “I’m In!” to enter
Winners will be notified on Saturday 25th Feb. Good luck!
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
The doors close to new members of the TWELVTY tribe at the end of Feb, so if you get lit up by color and think this is something you’d like to be a part of you have until 28 Feb to jump aboard. I don’t know if I’ll run this program again – next year I have other adventures lined up – this could be now or never!
(here’s the project that planted the seed in my imagination to create TWELVTY)
Want to know more? Ask me in the comments below 🙂
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Happy Birthday!
(But more on that in a moment… first let me set the scene…)
I was telling you about how TWELVTY has begun to take on a life of its own. It’s just a few weeks into its year long life and it’s not going the way I imagined…
Instead of being the set of 12 individual colored months, like I first planned, TWELVTY is turning into a story made of 12 chapters. They are woven together and already I can see that taken separately they lose the essential essence of the story. The full year of color has a life the months alone can’t provide.
To begin I wanted to make this program available to join throughout the year, but what I didn’t know then was how all-encompassing it was to become! It’s grown beyond my imaginings, and to be honest if someone was to join later in the year I don’t think they’d get the full magic of being a part of TWELVTY just by accessing the material retrospectively.
So I’ve decided to close the doors on TWELVTY at the end of this month.
No more new recruits after the end of February.
But wait up! that’s not all….
Before the doors close, as today is my birthday ………
I’m going to gift 2 FREE PLACES in TWELVTY 2017 in a Prize Draw.
The prize draw runs from Friday 17th Feb for ONE WEEK.
Winners will be notified Saturday 25th February.
Are you someone who gets all lit up about color?
Would you love to join a tribe of creatives who are just like us?
If so, just jump on my mailing list here and
reply to the welcome email with the title “I’M IN!”
to add your name to the hat for the prize draw.
(and as a welcome, you get this little ebook all about color when you join my list)
Want to find out more about what’s in TWELVTY – it’s all over here . I also did a big ole Q&A post over here. Or ask me in the comments – I’m massively excited about this – ask me anything! (anything about TWELVTY…I don’t have answers to much else!)
I don’t know if I’ll be offering this program again. Next year has different adventures in store for me, so this could be ‘now or never’, folks!
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A life of its own…
Y’now I’ve been immersed in color for the last few months. Not my usual multi-colored chaos (although there’s no escaping that) – but a very specific niche of color – as I explore and examine the color wheel.
It’s a project I played with a few years ago keeps returning to in one way or another.
It keeps coming back.
It’s a compulsion.
But this time is a little different: this time I’m joined by other artists and creatives, and we’re on this adventure together. And I’m totally loving it!
We began the year in shades of sunshine & lemon with YELLOW, and now in the second month we’ve stepped round to the luscious lime and sumptuous olive tones that fall into YELLOW-GREEN. Next month we explore GREEN… so on, cycling around the color wheel, a month at a time.
The thing is, since I decided to share this color journey, it’s taken on a momentum and is developing a character of its own. (As big projects so often do).
As I plan forward into the upcoming months of colors I see this adventure develop into one big ongoing story, rather than the 12 little self-contained, single-color tales I first envisaged. I anticipated TWELVTY being the kind of course folks to hop on board any time through the year, with instant access to all the material to date.
…..But 6 or so weeks in, TWELVTY has become something much bigger than I realised it would be, and that simply isn’t the way it’s decided to grow.
So I’ve made a decision.
Which I’ll tell you about on Friday.(Because Friday is special)
Want to find out more about what’s in TWELVTY – it’s all over here . I also did a big ole Q&A post over here. Or ask me in the comments – I’m massively excited about this – ask me anything! (anything about TWELVTY…I don’t have answers to much else!)
Hop on my mailing list here to get irregular updates on my colorful makings & doings direct to your inbox.
(and as a welcome, you get this little ebook all about color when you join)
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A Year Full of Color: Part One (& a gift)
Well hey there lovely friends! Guess what today is? Today is the day I open the doors of my Etsy Shop!
To celebrate it’s 10% of everything (excluding shipping) until the end of January! Use Coupon Code YELLOW10 🙂
As the TWELVTY month of yellow draws to a close the fruit of this color’s makings will be going out into the world! If you like yellow, and you like quirky artsy things made from recycled and vintage materials then I think you’ll love what I have there!
As part of TWELVTY, my year long adventure round the color wheel a month at a time, I’ll be adding what I make in each month to the shop. (so if you’re more greeny-blue, or exclusively purple, or really just about red — there will be a month coming up just for you later in the year)
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I made this little ebook all about color if you share my fascination with color.
It’s all yours when you hop on my newsletter list here.
(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it some biscuits, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
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Playing
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
don’t stop 😉
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YELLOW MONDAY
Does this talk of ‘Blue Monday’ get you down? Who needs the media reminding them to feel any less bouyant and joyful than they already do?
I need to counteract this craziness, and my way (as in all things) is to use color!
Monday 16th January 2017 is now YELLOW MONDAY.
Yellow is the color of sunshine, the color of hope and happiness, and the color of January in my year full of color program, TWELVTY.
To back that up there’s a 24 hour offer for new TWELVTY folks: from 9am GMT Monday 16th January for just 24 hours you can get 12 months of color for the price of 10.
And if TWELVTY isn’t for you, know that you can make your day whatever color you want it to be. Have a great week my friends – don’t let the media tell you how to feel!
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I made this little ebook all about color if you’d like to get an taste of TWELVTY.
It’s all yours when you hop on my newsletter list here.
(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it treats, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
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12 things about TWELVTY
Want to brighten up your 2017, meet creatives, see color in a whole new way? Join TWELVTY!
- Unlike other online art programs, in TWELVTY each segment is all about one color. There are no assignments or structured projects, just a feast of content to inspire you!
- TWELVTY is designed to integrate in your existing creative practice, if you use color, you can use TWELVTY! Every month begins a new color so it’s super adaptable and every month you get to start over!
- We’re journeying round 12-part color wheel, this means every second color is a tertiary “inbetweeny” color (think yellow-green, turquoise, magenta…) Personally these are my favs, but if you skip over these you’ll still have a complete spectrum of art by the end of the year.
- TWELVTY is a brilliant way to make use of the art supplies you neglected in the past, explore colours you wouldn’t usually use, especially the things you only have cos they were part of a set!
- Working in just one color is a great solution to blank canvas overwhelm. Begin with a paint splodge, wash or doodle, a collage scrap or an abstract photo of found color. Or just give some thought to what that color means to you…The ideas will follow close behind! Overcome this challenge and open up to a world of creative possibility!
- TWELVTY is also a community of likeminded people from around the world and with a wide range of creative backgrounds. Join our tribe and share ideas and inspiration, even collaborate together.
- Then there’s our collection of online color resources which you get immediate access to. And I’m constantly adding to it!
- Every month you’ll receive a 20+ page ebook especially for TWELVTY. It’s full of illustrations, photos & juicy rich content about the month’s color. From the history of how it’s used, to connections and meanings attached to the color around the world, as well as art & design.
- I invite you to join me as I work just in the month’s color. Every Monday I send you a newsletter where I share my creative process through video & photo galleries of works in progress. This content is only for TWELVTY members and is available in the TWELVTY archives all year long.
- At the end of each month the art I made as part of TWELVTY will go in my online shop. There are special discounts just for TWELVTY members.
- Looking out for color invites you to observe the world around you on a new level. It adds to the richness of the everyday places and things, and brings back a childlike sense of fun and wonder.
- All of this works out at just £12 a month! That’s about the equivalent of one fancy cup of coffee once a week. (I’d make my own coffee once a week for all this, wouldn’t you?) 😉
Ready to jump in, or intrigued and want to find out more?
I made this little ebook all about color if you’d like to get an taste of TWELVTY.
It’s all yours when you hop on my newsletter list here.
(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it raisins & chocolate, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
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Be well, my friends, Much love to you all X
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who is that?
The time is here: I really want to consolidate some of the mishmash of identities I’ve got here on the internets. It’s confusing for me now, so I forget how disconbobulating it must be for others…
Y’see, I set this blog up all those years ago as a bit of a whim. I wanted to have a record of what I was doing and making and thinking at the time and it seemed like the internets was a safe place to put it so it didn’t all get eaten alive by yet another computer. That’s all.
“Ephemeral Gecko” was just a couple of words I liked. I liked the way they sounded together.
I didn’t figure on anyone else noticing. I googled the phrase and when nothing untoward came up in the results, I made the choice and claimed the name. It didn’t occur to me anyone else would be interested in these musings. So, live n learn, huh?
Recently I heard Seth Godin talking about blogs – when you start to write online, he advised, use a pseudonym, gauge the response, if it isn’t favourable then who cares – it wasn’t ‘you’. Yes! clever me and my forethought! I knew that already! that’s what I did!!
Then he went on to recommend you switch to your real name after a few weeks.
Oh, not that bit. I didn’t do that bit.
And it’s been a few years now …
… and a few names too.
Ephemeral Gecko became the me that instagrammed and twitted (not twitting often enough to matter… until I remembered the auto-twitting of my blog posts I set up and promptly forgot about. So in that sense, a version of me I’d forgotten about was busy over there.
A long time before all this happened I used the name pentangled for my jewellery making and early dabbles into digital art. I disliked that name more and more over the subsequent years and having established myself in that guise in deviantArt & redbubble, I finally ditched it.
I know, I know.
I adopted the name Mixy on facebook, to begin from pure silliness, then stuck with it as a point of principle. That was a time when it was being claimed fb was closing down the accounts of folk not using their real name. Which was really screwing up the lives of ppl who needed anonymity for their personal safety. That wasn’t my story, but I wanted to stand in solidarity with those for whom it was. No matter how futile and ineffective. I knew why, and that’s what mattered to me at the time.
There’s all sorts of reasons why this all seems scrappy and indecisive and bad practice, not quirky and adorable and fun. But there we are. I’m all those things, and I’m using the defence of “I’m an artist” in the same way as Marvin Gaye (formerly Spartacus) Chetwynd does. Because really, who cares? I make stuff. I share it online and sometimes real life exhibitions.That’s all that really matters. If things like this get you all tangled up, don’t let it, pour that angst into something important and leave me here.
This is all of me. Here I am – just the one of me – typing this too you in all the places I type to you from. And perhaps someplace automated I don’t remember too.
If you’d like more insights into my ridiculous & made up world, my colorful antics & frippery, you can do so by hopping onto my newsletter list for sporadic updates. And I’ll send you my lovingly hand crafted ebook all about color
Be well, my friends, Much love to you all X
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(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it biscuits, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
Mixy's Art Blog 