My Lenses Great and Small

Caravaggio was an Italian artist who lived at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. He was not only very good with his brush but also with knife and sword. He even killed one man in a brawl.

He did not celebrate the beauty of man but man as he is – sick, brutal and often a criminal.

If you are interested in getting more information about him you will find it on my latest squidoo page:

Caravaggio

There was a time when I had no facebook account. I had a twitter account, I wrote blog posts, but I had no facebook account.

Then I registered with facebook, but I did not spend much time with it. I had my tweets connected with facebook, and some people commented on my tweets via facebook. Well, I thought, that’s interesting.

In May 2009 I registered with Squidoo, and I noticed that there were quite a few squidoo groups on facebook. So I began to visit Facebook now and then, to promote my lenses. I only got more interested in facebook however with the beginning of the year 2010, with more and more fan pages opening there.

Now, in the beginning of March 2010 I’ve got a fan page of my own. It is called ArtandMusic, and I want this fan page to be the showcase of my inner artist and art-lover: be it a showcase for my squidoo pages on artists and art history, on music of a certain era, on composers. But the showcase will not be limited to squidoo pages – one of the last entries there is a drawing made with watercolor pencils and worked on with photoshop.

You are most welcomed to visit this facebook fan page, and of course you are most welcomed to become a fan of this page – but that is for you to decide.

The days are longer in Berlin now, the ice and snow have gone away and the temperatures have risen over freezing point. We’ve had a few sunny days with blue sky. What I am missing however, is the color of the flowers.

Whenever I have this yearning for colorful flowers I do two things: I go to the next flower shop and buy me some of those wonderful yellow-red-orange tulips. And I browse through Flickr photos and Squidoo lenses.

There is one Squidoo page I can recommend to anyone who’s got the winter blues: Orange flowers. There you can bathe your eyes in orange flower postcards. You can follow the link to a gallery at Flickr full with amazing orange flower photos. You can bid for some orange flower paintings. You can also participate in a poll in your favorite orange flower (at the moment hibiscus, calendula and tulip are the favorite ones).

Hop over and forget your winter blues!

Mona Majorowicz is a blogger, an artist and a squidoo lensmaker. Actually I first met her through her blog “Fur in the Paint” where she blogs about her artist’s experience and her working processes. Among others she creates lovely horse pictures with watercolor pencils.I love horses and I love to come back to her blog posts.

I did a few rather amateurish pictures of animals with pastels and water colors myself, but I never tried painting or drawing with watercolor pencils. It took me some of her blog posts till I noticed that she is a lensmaster, too, and creates lenses about her experiences as an artist.

If you want to get an overview over her work I recommend visiting Wild Faces Gallery Art Lensography. She presents her lenses about Framing and Art Conservation there, her lenses on Art Fairs, and her lenses on Watercolor pencils.And she has written a lot more lenses on artwork – hop over and have a look for yourself!

Her lensography is very well crafted. She not only presents her lenses but also talks about herself, accompanied by beautiful photographs. After having read her lensography I had the feeling I had met her in reality, as a real person.

And I know have the immediate desire to go and try those watercolor pencils that are stashed somewhere in my shelf. Well…

Two of my very close friends are playing in an Irish Folk Group here in Berlin. Claudia is playing the flute, and Gunter sings and plays the guitar. They are both doing this in their free time, as the rest of the group, but although they are only “amateurs”, their music has a high quality.

They used to give a concert at St. Patrick’s day. I don’t know whether they will have one in 2010, but if they won’t I’ll dig out my Irish folk cds and have a private concert at home. Or, with the help of Waxing-Lyrical’s great squidoo page “Irish Music for St. Patrick’s Day” I will get some new ones for my collection. I know the famous song “Whiskey in the Jar” interpreted by the Dubliners, but I never heard Thin Lizzy singing it. (nor did I know Thin Lizzy!). I know “Song for Ireland”, but not played by the Dubliners, and “Danny Boy” interpreted by the female ensemble Celtic Woman was totally new to me.

So going through the page and listening to the various pieces of Irish Folk was a great joy for me. It also has inspired me to discover new interpreters of Irish music. Thanks, Waxing-Lyrical!

Berlin is still covered with snow. We had some days where the temperature went above freezing point. The ice on our sidewalks melted, and the sidewalks became sloshy. At night, the temperatures go down again, and the slosh becomes ice again. Yuck! It is very dangerous, especially for older people, and some of them haven’t left their flats for weeks.

Now, in February, I miss the colors so much. Yesterday we were lucky and had a blue sky for 3 hours, and then the world went grey again. That made me look for ersatz colorful things, and indeed I discovered some of them:

• There’s a wonderful lens created by Geeve, called “Gardens to Visit“. It presents beautiful gardens all over the world. Just looking at the pictures lifted up my spirit.
• Keukenhof Gardens in Holland, by janices7. Keukenhof Gardens are famous for their tulips in all colors and forms. It is the appropriate lens to forget winter and dream youself to spring!
• I also had a longer look at my lens The Gardens of the World in Berlin. Looking at it reminded me of the sunny late summer day when I went there and took a lot of photos.

I invite you to enjoy the three lenses!

Today I am in the mood to celebrate. January hasn’t been an easy month for me. First there was pleurisy, and then there was a period of feeling utterly uncreative and unproductive. I had to force myself to writing blog posts over at Ulla Hennig’s Weblog, and my first lens in 2010, the one about Salzburg, was created without passion, and, I am afraid, it reads like that.

I was very scared. Would I ever be able to write again passionately? Would I be able again to create quality lenses? Would I ever become a passionate writer again? Friends (from Squidoo and out of Squidoo) told me that such a state like the one I was in was normal, and that it would not last forever. Reading that helped a bit.

And then suddenly, creativity came back. It came back together with temperatures going up in Berlin (we had days with -10 Celsius during the day), with me feeling totally healthy again. I decided to create another music lens – one about the Music of the Renaissance. Yesterday I hit the PUBLISH button, and I invite you, my dear readers, to come and have a look!

Last New Year’s eve was a very special one: I spent it – together with one of my cousins – in Salzburg. It was my first New Year’s eve for years away from Berlin, and it was just great!

Of course we had guided tours through the city and the neighbouring regions, but the highlight was a wonderful concert on the castle Hohensalzburg high above the town and a five course dinner in one of the halls of the castle, followed by the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen.

I created a lens about this marvelous town, so in case you are interested: just hop over and say hello!

In the last days I’ve got angels’ blessings for my lens “The Renaissance”. This makes me think that the lens is not too bad. Unfortunately, though, its rank is below 50 000.

I must admit, that during the months I went for Giant I did not do much lens-promotion. I cranked them out and that was it.

So now I’ll put the focus on promotion, which means:

1. blog about it
2. tweet about it at different time of the day, due to the different time zones
3. maybe write an article in ezines or goarticles.com (which will be absolutely new to me)

My aim is to get non-squidoo people coming to my lens, so announcing it in the different squidoo nings is not on the top of the list.

What are your promotion strategies?

Yesterday evening I was almost biting my fingernails – I knew it was time to be informed about whether I would reach Giant status or not.

And then, when I read my mail at the office, I saw it – the Congratulation e-mail! Wow! Due to the fact that I share my office room with another colleague on Fridays I could not twist and shout, but happy I was and still am.

I got ill on the 18th of December and all my planning (I am a planning freak, you must know) went round the bend. I had three lenses to make in order to reach 50, and I was prepared to quit.

And then Kathy McGraw, Michelle Willows and Crystal entered the stage. It took them quite some time to talk me out of quitting, but they managed to do it. I sat down and made my 50 lenses.

There are two lessons to learn from that:

1. you can do a lot of things, even things you think to be impossible, if you really want to.
2. Man is no island – we need friends to cheer us up, to get us going, and even – sometimes – to kick us in the behind.

And so I raise my mug of delicious fruit tea to all my squidoo friends and say a big THANK YOU!