Having a special place to be creative isn’t a luxury – its a necessity.

It doesn’t have to be a ‘studio’ either – it can be a space at the dining room table or even in a large closet – because all you really need is a place to go to remove yourself from the every day.  The space only has to allow you the freedom to be in a creative state without distraction.

There’s something special about a cozy, hidden nook anyway – remember forts and clubhouses and tree houses?  That’s where we spent a good bit of time as kids – why wouldn’t it work for us still today?

This photograph was taken in one of my special places – a hidden area of the yard where misfit items go (like the land of misfit toys or as I like to call it, “Wonderland”).

There are old doors and windows and broken pots and gazing balls and broken statues and other oddities there.  There are two very large (fake) mushrooms and an over-sized, plastic wind spinner (polka dot, of course) and two ridiculously large, yellow metal butterflies on springs that bounce in the breeze – and all are ‘artfully’ displayed as if it mattered – no one can see it but me.

SO, IT DOES MATTER.  It matters a lot.

Wonderland wasn’t intentional, at first.  It just sort of ‘happened’.  But whenever I pass through the (pretend) gate, which is just past the fairy tree (in case you were wondering) …I am a little bit transformed.

Wonderland is where I go to become Light Blue.