the kindness of strangers

Ever since I began this blog I have been struck by the kindness of people in the blogosphere.  So much encouragement and support.  So many kind words and thoughtful comments.  Yesterday's Paint Party Friday was so much fun!  It was wonderful to see so many creative people full of enthusiasm for their art and it was so encouraging to see such a spectrum, too.  A spectrum of where people are in their lives and where people are in their artistic journeys.  It's exciting to be diving in to my artistic journey and finding so many others who are traveling their own, too.  Thank you to all of you who commented on yesterday's post.  Thank you for all the suggestions (some great ideas that I'd never thought of before) and for all the enthusiasm and encouragement for my work.  You make it that much easier to sit down and create.  Having a cheering section takes away a little of the fear.

Last week I visited Claire Leggett's blog and saw that she was having a giveaway to celebrate her brand new (gorgeous!) website.  I "met" Claire during the Get Your Paint On class.  I loved her artwork and her blog was so pretty and fun (look at her jazzed up puppy crate!) and after exchanging comments on Flickr and on our blogs, I found that Claire is also really nice.  So, I entered her giveaway and I was so excited when I found out that I had won!  And then today, when I walked down the driveway to get the mail there was my package from Claire in the mailbox!

So very fun to unwrap!

With the wonderful bonus of a set of absolutely gorgeous postcards.  I love, love, love them!

And the painting!

So beautiful!  I had to run upstairs and rearrange my arty wall* to include Claire's painting.

The blue surrounding the butterflies matches so well with my other bits of blue on that shelf.

I've been meaning to rearrange things for a while and I have other things I want to hang, this just makes it that much more exciting!

Thank you so much Claire.

More than just the kindness I've found in my blogging experience, I'm struck at a time like this, in the wake of a devastating natural disaster, by just how good and caring people can be.  In my old life and my former job I often encountered cruelty, neglect, ignorance and all sorts of other ugliness.  It was hard to keep my faith in the human race when day after day I saw so many examples of the worst parts of human nature.  This past week, though, I have seen so many examples of the goodness of people as so many people do their part to help Japan.





*Framed watercolor of carnations by Kathy Minnig, my husband's aunt; altered photograph cards by Jamie Heiden; ceramic leaf impression by Elk Hollow Pottery; calendar page print of girl with a branch growing out of her head by Catherine Campbell; "Create" canvas print by Kelly Rae Roberts; the silver cup is engraved with my name and was a present when I was a baby; I liked the color of the blue bottle and the horse was my grandmother's; the matchbox car is my dream truck.