Dot and Line Designs

After 20 minutes of switching things up, it looks a bit different on here. I should have folded laundry, but I feel so productive with a new blog layout.

*insert smooth transition to next topic*

I doodle. I think I have always loved doodling, and I have often thought about "doing something with it," but never had. Doodling inspiration has always come and gone, I have never been consistent enough to produce anything frame/sell worthy. I needed a theme to go with, a solid idea, a "doodling niche."

One night last fall, I was drifting off to sleep and I was thinking about doodles. Not sure why my mind went there, but I was feeling a lack of creativity that week.  That evening, in that weird drifty state of consciousness, I had the idea. A line fell in love with a dot, they danced, and their twirls made a doodle.

A few days later I sat down, pen in hand, to try it out. I knocked out 20 different designs in an hour. Completely unprecedented. Also in that hour, a voice from the sky shouted "And you shall become Dot and Line Designs." Not really. But I was so excited by this spurt of creativity and results that I opened an Etsy shop right then and there called DotandLineDesigns.

Not a lot has "happened" since then. While I have sold several card collections, the biggest thing to result from that drowsy inspired moment is that all of a sudden, I have found my artistic bent. Art and music have always been important to me, something that I considered a part of me, but something that I never really pursued or excelled at. I never felt "good at" anything artistically, and never had a focus. When I sat down at a blank page I could fill a corner or two with something tangled, perhaps quirky, but I did not have anything to lose myself in for a while. But now I have found my dots and lines. My pen puts random on paper, and it becomes a doodle. The resulting tangles, twists and turns usually resemble my rambling thoughts; losing myself along the lines of my pen seems to help convey the flips and flops that my mind somersaults through.
Empty pages have greater potential. I feel for the first time that I have something artistic worthy of nurturing.

It may sound unimportant, but for me, these dots and lines have bubbled up from somewhere, and I feel as if a little piece of my crazy is actually able to find its way to something solid and tangible. I drift and float a lot, riding the waves of jumbled thoughts, tasks, ideas and feelings, and it feels really good to be able to create something concrete from all the fluff. To quote the Line that inspired my lines, "I'VE GOT DIGNITY!" Or something along that line...

Dot and Line Design is not really anything yet. Not sure what, if anything, it will grow into. But I am thankful for my lines and their dots and excited to see what they become.

Here is the book that inspired my doodles. Rather, here is the retelling of that book. Enjoy!