The Messy Book

Despite my best intentions, I have been absent from here longer than I wished to be again.  But, no use dwelling and all that... I'm going to just jump right back in.

I recently joined Lisa Wright's Messy Group, focused around a book by Keri Smith entitled Mess.  It is filled with exercises that encourage one to just get messy.  Very liberating... especially for those of us who may have a touch of the control freak in us. 

Several of the other participants got their book a few weeks ago and have jumped in with both feet.  My book arrived a week or so ago and, rather than madly jumping in as I usually do with new books, I peeked at a few pages and then put it down on the corner of my desk.  A day or so later, I picked it up and flipped through a page or two, and then gingerly placed it back on the desk, looking at it out of the corner of my eye every so often and telling myself that I really NEEDED to get going.  I read posts from those more daring than I about placing their book out in the rain and the snow, putting moldy items in bags and placing them in the book, using raw eggs (for what, I'm still not sure).  I began to think that perhaps this really isn't for me.  The idea of an egg on a plate disgusts me.  In a book is just beyond what I can endure!

Last night, I picked up the book again and randomly opened it to a page with grid.  The instructions were to select ten colors in any medium and fill in the spaces of the grid in a pattern.  Here's where it gets kooky, folks.  Somewhere in the grid, you have to INTENTIONALLY insert a mistake.

Now, I'm not saying I'm perfect by any stretch.  I make LOTS of mistakes.  But not intentionally.  When I do make a mistake, I agonize over it. I try to fix it (inevitably making it far worse!).  But, this didn't require raw food so I thought to myself, it's now or never.  I pulled out some new, very juicy Prismacolor markers and went to town on this grid.   I used bold, bright colors.  I didn't care if I stayed neatly within the lines. 

And, horror of horrors, I did not put anything behind the page to keep these bold, juicy markers from bleeding through the page.  I know, I know... you're thinking, "wow, she lives on the edge!"  But it turns out that it created this kind of cool, honeycomb like pattern on the next page, for which the exercise was to use all the colors you have on hand to fill in the 5x5 box on the page. 

Now, I think the fact that I didn't even stay within the 5x5 box should surely grant me a pass on the egg exercises, no??

On a slightly different note, when I look at these pictures on my computer, they are vertical, but when I post them here or to facebook, they are showing up horizontally (rotated to the right). Has anyone else had that problem or know why it is happening (or more importantly, how to fix it?)  I took these pictures with my phone versus scanning them as I used to do (and I never had this problem with the scanned pics).  Any thoughts greatly appreciated!