Open Studios and following your gut

Open studios was this weekend and it was a big success.  We artists love having people come out and share in our spaces and in our love of creativity at the Arsenal.  Thank you to all who came out to support us.  We had newbies who ooooohhhh'ed and ahhhhhhh'ed and then we had familiar faces stop by to lend support and buy some of our wares.  We love those folks!!  We gear up for this for months and we always say, "We should do this more often" but truth be told it wouldn't be as good if we did it all the time.  It's better to have something fabulous only occasionally as it keeps it's allure that way.  Here are some pictures I took with my Itouch.  Sadly my Nikon is in the shop and I won't even go there about how upsetting it is.....back to happiness and goodnesss......here's the montage...................................

the entry

the gorgeous Jan Ely stopped by... 

my daughter Abby and her friend Louise helped a lot

                                            

Cami and Olivia came to check it out

                                                    

and of course Terence came to hang in his spot.

                                                 

Lee wanted to rock a tutu....who am I to refuse?

Hip Chick with Hermann chickalicious

                                                    

Molly, Carrie and Carrie again...

                                                    

   tutu lovers.......

                                                        

 Hip chick with sweet Sandi all in bloom...

                                            

these artsy girls grabbed at my chocolate cake.....

                                          

 Scott was kickin it in his studio

                                                  

Hip Chick in her signature tutu

                                              
                                    

my helpers took a time out to be creative....always welcome at Hip Chick's!

                                        

now this shirt should be mine!  LOVED IT!

                                          

 If there's a party, Alexander is there!

                                              

two sassy hip chick's

                                                    

 All hail the Queen....

                                                  

new friend Erica and her art

Felix and Lynn dropped in for some fun

sassy friends Fran and Mary 

the shop

The pictures show the fun, that's what I love about taking them.  We artists love to show off our work though and I am happy to say I sold many of my art pieces.  It's just VALIDATING to have someone buy something you made, ya know?  That's the best feeling there is, as a creative person, lemme tell you.  

So today I vegged all day.  Yummy.  Spring is here and I couldn't be happier.  Cause I'm like the weather, "when it's cloudy, I'm cloudy and when it's sunny, I'm sunny".  This weeks weather looks to be nice and warm and I intend on making the most of it, I hope you do too.  Thanks again to those who were able to come, and thank you for those of you who couldn't, but who are taking the time to read my blog.  I appreciate YOU too, and I will be going online for those who want to buy hip chick goodies but live too far away.  I wanna help you out!  What can I say, I am just nice like that....

I was just about to sign off and I saw my topic titile said "open studios and following your gut" and I didn't talk about about guts yet...so I guess I better.  Guts.  Hmmm.  a messy, gooey, topic really.  haha.  I put that in my Title because if I hadn't followed my gut I wouldn't have been participating in Open Studios at all.  So it is by following your gut that you get these sparkely gems that you never would have dreamed of until they present themselves.  I encourage you to just try to do that thing you love, just sometimes, and see what happens.  We are called to it, and if you don't listen, then you will miss out.  And that's sad.  I know fear is a powerful forcefield and it can convince us that we aren't good enough, that we don't have the time, the money, the degree, the influence, the space, the energy, the passion, the whatever we need to have to do it.  But we do.  It's only a matter of doing it.  I promise.  It's only a matter of saying yes.  Yes I will try, yes I will do that thing, yes I will do one tiny little step towards that enormous goal that seems so big I could never get there.  And then before you can believe it, you're there......so what's stopping YOU?

"love yourself"