Merry Day After Christmas!

I hope that you all had a fantastic and loved filled Christmas as I did. It was a low key event but fun all the same. Today, I am playing with new toys and getting caught up on some scanning a blogging.

I can now show you the ornaments that I made for my family and the Wichtel exchange. It took two different designs, because I could not find the Mints box I had used on the Wichtel ornament. I had to go with the Altoid Smalls container and that meant I had to redesign the front of the ornament. All in all they came out fantastic. It took a lot of work but the giving of them far out weighed the work. I also made two cute Domino Guy ornaments for my two younger sons (they are the bottom photo).

This photo (top) is of the outside of the tin, the little card I made and also the outside of the box I made, yes I made my own boxes.

The A. Smalls are a bit smaller than the Mints tin, which meant I had to make my elements smaller. I used small photos of a lady with child on the front and Santa on the inside and various other fun bits. I also used a small photo on the inside of the card with our Christmas wishes. The card and boxes were made from the same cardstock I used on the ornament.

I made patterns for the papers that I had to cut out. First, I made the angels which is a photo of the paperclip angels I found online. Not sure where the maker of these angels found those strange paper clips to make their angels. When I had gone to the store the week before I had bought some red wire not really knowing what I was going to make with it, that is until I saw the paperclip angels. All I did was make the photo the size I wanted the angels to be and then put small nails at turning points and bent the wire around them. Oh, I used the back of one of my mini cutting mats to nail onto. It turned out great, real easy to do.

After making the angels I realized that they needed a home to hang out in. Well, as a "junk" collector I searched my treasure boxes to find the right home and that is when I thought about using the Mints tin. A little black paint and then a bit of silver paint and a bunch of this and that and viola! a glorious home for an angel.

These two cute little guys are the ornaments I made for my two sons. I used small wooden Dominoes and Scrabble pieces plus some of my treasure bits. The dots on these little guys bodies are the ages of my two sons. The 'head' is their initials, L for Liam and E for Erick. I need to make a third guy for my 23 year old son, Darin, which I will do soon. Anyway, it was a blast creating these little domino guys. I was in my art studio laughing while I was making them, which I am sure my family thought that I had once again lost my mind, or maybe they just think that I am always a bit crazy;-)

Look What I Got in the Mail Today

On Milliande Art Community for Women under the sub-group The Lucky Ladies, some members joined in on a Wichtel Christmas tree ornament exchange. A Wichtel is a secret Santa type activity where names are exchange and that person is to send their person a gift, in this case a homemade ornament.  I got a beautiful lady in Henderson NV and made her a nice ornament. Though I would love to show you the ornament I made it is going to have to wait until after Christmas. This is because I made more and will be giving those to my daughters and they sometimes read my blog. I will post the photos of those ornaments after Christmas.
I got my Wichtel ornament today in the mail. It was a complete surprise because I had forgotten that I was to get one. My ornament came from Canada and I love it. It is the domino doll pictured here. I do not know how this wonderful lady who made this ornament knew that this beautiful piece of art would fit my style. It is perfectly me! I am not going to put it away after Christmas because it is way too cool for that. It will hang on the wall in my studio so that I can be reminded of how wonderful it is to have artist friends from all over the world.
If the Lucky Ladies do this again next year I am sure going to join in on the fun.
Happy Holidays to all!

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

There are times of the year in which many people become over loaded with what needs to be done and this month holds the biggest event in most peoples lives, Christmas. I have tried over the years to not get bogged down in the "to dos" of the holiday season. For the most part I have succeeded. My children have learned only to ask for gifts or a gift that is around a hundred dollars, not counting stocking stuffers. I really only have two younger boys to buy for because my older children are adults and I try and make them something cool.

The other people I make things for are neighbors, only a select few, five to be exact. What is important is the act of making the gift with those whom you have in mind to give to. I enjoy the process of coming up with a nice thoughtful small gift for my neighbors who are there for me if and/or when I need them. Last year it was a cool Christmas card book made out of a paperback (you can see it on my Flickr page, the link is on the right side of blog). It took a bit of time to make and because of my Fibromyalgia I was in a lot of pain, but it was worth the effort because those special neighbors loved the card.

Today and the rest of the week I am working on this years gift for neighbors and children. I have my pain under control so there will be even more joy in the making. Once the season is over I will post photos of the gifts I made. I pray that your holiday season is full of fun, family and friends and that you can leave the stress out of it. Enjoy the season!

Now about these two photos. These are the work I did for my online Creative Lettering class. We were to pick a bit of a song to use over wavy lines that were to be left in the final piece. The top piece is part of the song Kodachrome by Simon and Garfunkel and the second piece is a couple of quotes that I like. I loved writing on black paper. Some time this year I am going to make an all black papered journal and use cool pens to draw and write in. I have a sort of black journal started now but it is a place I put my Haikus and poetry in. I want and all black journal to draw in. But that is going to have to be put on my "to do" list for next year, for now I am off to work on my Christmas gifts.

Have a great and very creative day!

Teesha Moore Style

Happy first of December!

Yesterday I finished a collage in the style of Teesha Moore and boy was it fun. This style of collage work takes a bit of time, but the results are fun. I do not think that I will attempt another full collage in this style, but I will probably end of using some of its elements.
I love looking at other artists work because it inspires me to keep creating. So many artists have found their "voice" in certain forms of art. I know what my photographer's voice is, however I am still searching my style in my other art forms. It may take me a bit of time to find it, that is okay because searching for it is half the fun.

What I am planning on doing for this month is to create some gifts for family and friends. This time of year is always tight when it comes to money so I make gifts. I believe that my neighbors love their hand created gifts as do my family members. I do not make everyone in my family something, it is usually my two adult daughters. I will not tell you what the gifts will be because they read my blog from time to time. It is hard to make gifts for my boys, but at the same time it is easy to buy them what they want if we have the money. Creating something for others is always a fun and exciting time for me and I look forward to creating this years gifts. I will post them after Christmas for y'all to see. In the mean time have fun with your creating and Happy Holidays!

If Only I Could Get Back in the Habit ;-)

I plan on getting back in the habit of posting on my blog. Lately, I have been really bad about putting my creations up on here and that is making me feel crazy. From now on I promise to post at least once or twice a week, even if I do not have any work to show. Most of the time I have work to show and want to share it with my followers or those who happen to stop by. I promise!!!

I am still working through the lessons for my online art class and I also joined another art class that is learning how to make our lettering more creative. Being more creative with my lettering is something I needed to work on and this class is helping me to realize that goal. One of the main bits of information I have learned is that I must draw a light guideline with pencil in order to keep my lettering going in the direction I want it to go. My hand still shakes at times and the lines help me to keep on track, so to speak. The other bonus is getting to use different kinds of pens. I love using colorful pens when working with my lettering. My favorite is pens that are made for children, like Crayola markers and glitter pens. Really fun and because they are not expensive to buy I can enjoy using them.

These two pages are from lesson two in which we were to draw a guideline and then write a quote on it. One we were to erase the line and the other incorporate the line into the design. The Durrant quote is my line left in layout. The line erased layout is very bright and a lot going on in the design. I am still having a bit of trouble getting my letters to be equal in size, but at least I followed the line;-) I cannot wait for this weeks Creative Lettering class assignment. Not sure what she will have us do. All I know is that it will probably be fun.

I will add my other art class completed lessons this week, but for now I just wanted to get some images and words up on my blog and to put out there in the cyber world that I plan on doing a better job at posting to my blog.

Have a fun and very creative day!

It Has Been Too Long!

What Have I Been Doing? Well, for one thing I have been neglecting my blog. It has been too long between posts, I am truly sorry for that. I promise not to go so long between posts.

Now as to what I have been up to for the last couple of months. All the normal mom/teacher/wife stuff and my new job as bill collector for my doctor, which has taken some time to sort out the files of who owes what. As far as my art goes I joined another class on the Yahoo group Artists of the Round Table. The book we are following this time is Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks by Lynne Perrella. We are on lesson 4 now which is to create ATC cards that are journal prompts. I will be working on them today and/or tomorrow, but for now I will share some of my completed lesson projects. There will be a lot of photos to look at because of the amount of work I have done lately. Just wanted to warn you. I hope you enjoy them.

Lesson 1: We had to create a journal. I made mine out of black poster board and other various materials. The baby journal is a piece of embossed cardstock with various papers in it. It was fun creating these two journals.

Lesson 2: Take one image and do a different treatment eight times. The first image is the one I used and instead of photocopying the image I used my inkjet. One must always remember to use fixative on inkjet images otherwise the ink will run! I learned that lesson on the version that is on silver. I had forgotten to use fixative and when I glued the image down it made the ink turn green. I pulled off the image from the background and used a marker to add more green. Lesson learned! Some of the images I tweaked in Print Shop Pro X instead of straight printing. You know me I am a computer artist as well as all the other types, so I had to change the image a bit.

Lesson 3: We had to search through Perrella's book and find a page layout that we really liked and create our own version of it. I chose the page in which an artist made a journal just for her Haiku and poetry. I began the project by finding an image in a magazine and then writing a Haiku for it. After writing the Haiku I did the page similar to the inspiration piece in the book. Lots of stamping and inking went on. I used a piece of cardboard as the background and that is why it soaked up the ink even though I had painted the board first with a brown glaze. Oh well, it was a lot of fun creating the page. The page fits in the middle part of the journal I made (see above) and a bit of the page sticks out. The next pages I make outside of the journal will need to be on thinner paper, otherwise they will not all fit. I plan on putting some kind of fiber on the upper edge and not in the same place as the Haiku page. I think it will look cool with the many strings and such hanging out the top.

Well, now you know about some of the activities I have been doing the last little while, okay, long while. I will add my ATCs to my blog ASAP. I hope your days are creative, fun and full of joy!

Sunday Afternoon Creations

I have been taking a break from drawing for quite some time now and I miss it. Today my hubby took the boys to the movies and I was left home alone (well, not completely alone, I had my animal babies with me) and it was a day of good health, so I did some creating.

I turned the music up and got busy having some creative fun. The first creation was an experiment on making clear embossing powder crack. I learned the trick the other day at a friends house. She has card making classes once a month and it is always fun. Apparently she was going to do the crackle technique with some other stuff, I cannot remember what it was. She called around to the various craft stores but no one had it. However, one of the stores a store employee told her that the technique would work with several layers of clear embossing powder. We tried it and it worked out just great. It does not crack as much as the other stuff but still it did crack. (I will give directions at the end of this post). I was so excited about the technique, I just had to try it again. I used a bit of watercolor paper and made it almost the size of an ATC. It worked so well that I now have a new technique to try in my art journals and other works of art. The best part of my day with friends is being out of the house and creating with like minded and fun women. We were of different ages, two grandmothers (me being one of them, young grandmas of course;-) and two young mothers. We got to chat and create, a great day!

The other piece of art work I did today was a colored pencil ATC drawing of a rose. I had taken several very gorgeous photos of my neighbors beautiful roses a few weeks ago and decided to draw some of them. This red rose is my favorite photo (I will put the original on my nature blog). The colors that the camera capture were wild red and very bright. I did not have all the right pencils but enough to do a red rose. This drawing did not come out the same as the original, which is okay with me. I used another piece of the same watercolor paper as I did with the crackle piece above. It is roughly the size of an ATC, close enough for me. After I finished the drawing I antiqued the edges with a bit of black ink. It took layers and layers to get the rose to where I could say that it was done. In order to do any more of the roses that I took photos of I will need to buy more pencils. I did like drawing on the watercolor paper and will probably do a series of these beauties on the same paper and similar torn edges. So much fun, so few pencils! ;-)

I loved having my day alone and not freaking out because I was alone (taking a Valium always helps;-) No excuses anymore, I will create without pain or through the pain, which ever I will not let it get to me. Create, Create, Create!!! I will use the gifts that the Lord has given me. I hope you can, too! Have fun.....

(The technique for the crackle process is to do your stamping or what have you then use Versamark clear ink and clear embossing powder. Do the heating as usual and then let cool. Repeat the process at least four times. After it is done put the piece in the freezer and leave it there for a bit. Take it out and bend it the way you want the cracks to go. I had to put the piece back into the freezer several times to get it to crack. After I was happy with it I used black ink to antique it. It turned out rather well. Next time I may do a couple more layers and/or try my gold embossing powder with some of the clear. It is all good, because it is more play time for me.)

My "The Decorated Page" Workshop Lesson 6 (final lesson;-<)

Well, I think that I am done with the workshop I have been involved in. It has been fun coming up with page elements to fit certain applications and layouts. The hardest application for me was 'changing forms'. It just took a bit of thinking to come up with some design that fit both the theme of my art journal and the application. The final page is a story about me getting my driver's license. A road with trees and then writing. I used my brayer to make the road and dauber ink stamps for the trees. Getting the yellow for the divider line on the road was difficult because it did not show up well. I ended up using a glitter pen. The irony of the story is that I loved driving and up until four years ago I drove everywhere we went. Now I am driven around because of my illness, which by the way is getting much better. Soon, I hope, I will be able to drive more and more. I miss getting up and going when ever I wanted to. In due time I will be off again.

The next layout and application was Borders and Storytelling. It is the story of my birth as well as that of my twin brother. I did an earlier page of me as a baby, which is just on the other side of my twin's page. I do not have a baby photo of him, only his high school graduation photo. Which shocked me when I found it because my 23 year old son looks just like my brother. It is very amazing how much my two older boys look like my brothers. My 15 year old son looks like my little brother. Scary! but good;-)

The final page is a map of the places I have lived up until now (and for a good while). I really do not like to move, but I do like seeing and living in new places. This is why I wish to travel in a motor home around the the USA and work as an on the road artist, writer and such. I need to get healthy first and that means it will be a couple of years before this can happen. I can dream though and work on getting better. Practice my art and writing and enjoy being where I am, the here and now.


I will miss working on these workshops but will continue with my art journal autobiography. There is many more pages to fill in this journal and probably many more journals to fill. I will post my pages as I get them done. Now go create!!! ;-)

My "The Decorated Page" Workshop Lesson 5

I have done three more layouts for my Decorated Page workshop for the Yahoo group-Artists of the Round Table. This workshop has been a blast and using the theme of an autobiography has made making the pages sentimental. As I go along not all the memories of my childhood are good, some are even scary to remember, but I have to do it. This is a book that I want my children and their children and so forth to enjoy, even if they know of the horrible things that have happened to me. AT this point I am not sure I will make pages for those memories. I might just write about them and I may or may not leave them in the open. One of the exercises of this workshop was to insert an envelope as a page, so I may put the stories in there and leave it up to the reader to decide as to whether or not he/she wants to read them.

The layout of the two little motorcycles are done using the Diagonal and Springboard layout. The point of the springboard is to put objects that will remind you of a story. On the blank pages after this layout I will write the story of me and these two motorcycles. I loved these bikes a lot and they are the part of my childhood that bring me great joy.

The bookshelf page is done using the Columns and Information Gathering layout. I used a gold pen but the scanner cannot translate it. The writing is some of the authors I have read. The photos of the books are the ones I enjoy reading over and over except for Jasper Fforde. I have only read his books once through, but I enjoy reading the books in his series. I love to read, among other things and this love has thankfully passed onto my children (hubby loves to read also). I was privileged to teach two of them how to read (wish I had started teaching my children at home when the oldest was starting school) and that is one of my favorite accomplishments.

The final page here is actually the next to the last page in my book. I am saving the last page for my 50th birthday, which is next May. The page layout is using Organic Shapes and Decision Making. Once again the scanner did not pick up much of the shiny pink flowers. The paper I used was a 12x12 scrapbook piece that I thought was very pretty. I did antique it a bit in order to fit the theme of the page. I love antiquing paper because bright whites bother me. My fingers are still burgundy from the inking I did on the background. I should have scanned my fingers, they were a big mess. Hey, they looked like artist's hand;-)

I only have three more layouts to do (I think) for this workshop, but many more pages planned for this art journal. Fun! Fun! Fun!

Have a happy and creative day!

The Weekly Challenge - Stamps

The Weekly Challenge - Stamps is for another artist's Yahoo Group I am on called: Blissfully_Art_Journaling. There are several challenges given often and this one sounded fun.

We were to do an entire page using only rubber stamps and ink. I also used embossing powder in gold, which may not show up on the scan I did. I also used my children's alphabet stamps to stamp out the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could not use his full name because of two reasons; one not enough room and two there was one letter missing from the alphabet stamps and that was the letter D. A bunch of other stamps were used and several different inks.

Not perfect, but a good challenge to do. Limiting the materials or tools is a good way to get the brain thinking of different ways to use them. Sometimes when we have too many tools or too much material to use we get lost and cannot focus on what it is we want our page to say. Perhaps I will do this again and see what comes out of it.

Have a fun and creative day!

My "The Decorated Page" Workshop Lesson 4 (so far)

I am a member of "Artist's of the Round Table" Yahoo group, which is another group of artists. The group offers free lessons (you have to buy the materials and/or the books used) and I joined the group that is working its way through the book, "The Decorated Page" by Gwen Diehn. It has been a fun way to create an art journal.

The theme of my art journal is an autobiography of my life. Okay, it will not cover all of my life but a good amount. It sure is eye opening reflecting back on one's life and fun at the same time. This book is another acknowledgement of my wonderful 49 years. I might have it done by the time I turn 50, which is almost a year away.

The fun part is finding the material to use on the pages. I gathered up the few photos I have of me and will use copies of them on the pages. The other great adventure I had was going through postcards at our local antique shop. I found a lot of groovy postcards and a couple of magazines from way back when. I went with my 26 yo dd, who adores antiques (so, I guess she adores me;-) and while I sat searching through boxes of postcards she rambled, very slowly, through the rest of the shop. Great fun!

I did not post my other lessons because I just did not think about posting them on my blog, my bad! What I did in those lessons will be seen for the most part in the upcoming pages I do finish. For now, I hope you enjoy these pages.

Have a fun and very creative day!

The space postcard was the coolest one I found. It is very thick and I wanted to be able to read the senders message to his son or daughter (Kitt is the name) on the back, so I used a springy thingy to hold it to the page. It can be removed in order to read what I put on the page.

This is the front cover of the book and yes that is me when I was 14 or 15 cleaning the BBQ grill.

These are the homes I lived in when I was a kid until we moved to ?, you will have to wait to see where we moved;-)

In order to get the photos of the homes I had to use my digital SLR camera to take a picture of the computer screen. The maps I got from Google Earth. My scanner is not big enough to scan a two page spread so I copied and pasted, etc., in Corel Paint. It turned out okay. The one side is slightly off so San Fransisco has an extra letter, but that is okay.
Now, I am off to work on more pages. I hope you enjoyed these.

What Have You Read?

I got the following list from another blogger and thought I would go through and check to see how many I have read. There are many books on this list that I plan on reading and a few that I will not, namely that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. I saw the movie and that was enough for me.

So how many books on this list have you read?

The BBC says most people will only read 6 of these 100 Books.Instructions:Cut and Copy the list into your notes... then...1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (remove other persons X's)2) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte XX
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare XX
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres X
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne XX
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I have read 3 other books of his)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad XX
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare XXXXX
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 31 (I have reads hundreds of other books not even listed. I marked more than one X on some because that is how many times I have read them.)

EDM #230 Draw a Map

It has been awhile since I have drawn an EDM challenge. Drawing a map sounded fun and yet I had a hard time wondering what place I should draw a map of. It has been a long time since I have gone anywhere exciting. In fact, I really only go to the Doctor's office, maybe Walmart or on a rare occasion to Salt Lake City to an art store or a book store. Mostly I stay home for weeks at a time. Sounds boring, but when you suffer from anxiety going places is a chore. I am getting better at getting out of the house. I have the right medication now and so it is a little easier. However, I do not like to shop and I do not drive, therefore I only go to a few places and neighbors. When I thought about this it dawned on me that I should draw a map of my house.
I did not want to just draw a simple map of my home because that would be boring, so I drew a map of my home and how I travel about it daily.
With colored Sharpies in hand I drew my house and the stuff in it (to a point;-). Once I laid that out I drew the steps I take through out the day. (click on the photo to enlarge it)
Wow! I did not know that I wandered around the house so much every day, but I do.
Now about my drawing and why it does not look exactly like my house. Well, honestly I do not know why it came out so not like my house. The rooms are in the right places, but the hallway is straight. Oh well, I guess that would be what they call artistic license;-)
I drew a pencil layout of my house the way it really is, only the drawing is way off scale, but you get the general idea as to how the house is suppose to look. I hope you enjoyed My Daily Walk.

Have a very Happy and Creative day!

Love This Book and the Things it Taught Me!

I finished reading Danny Gregory's book, "An Illustrated Life" yesterday and I enjoyed every page. The big bit of wisdom I got from his book is that no matter your journal style you should just focus on working in your journal/sketchbook. Many of the artists in his book have been working in their sketchbooks for many years, while others have just started. Another bit of information I gained is that these sketchbooks to most of the artists are treasures and that they would run through fire to protect them.

I loved seeing the art from these featured artist. Some made me laugh and others brought tears to my eyes. Danny's book is one of those art books that belongs on your bookshelf with all the other art books. Not to just sit there and collect dust but to be taken down read and to be inspired by the treasures inside. If you must check it out at your local library do so often. It is worth the effort.

I begun this sketch the day I got Danny's book and finished it the same day I finished reading his book. What caused the subject of this page is this. When I first receive books I will skim the pages look at the contents, the index, Artist bio and then the catalog information. I like knowing when an author is born. Most modern books have done away with listing the birth year of the author but Danny's book does. In the shipment of books I had also received another art book and finished doing all my scanning of that book and then started on Danny's. Both books listed the birth year of the author, the other book the author was born in 1943, and Danny's says that he was born in 1960. I was shocked to see that he was born the same year I was. Then it sunk in, "he was born in the same year as I was, but he has books published and is successful!" and I thought, "what have I done?" "What do I have to show for my 49 years?" That is when I got the idea to make a page, in the fashion of a mind map to see if I had actually done anything important in my years.
Guess what? I have done extraordinary things in my wonderful 49 years and this journal page shows nearly all that I have done. Not all because the page is only so big, but most of the major activities and accomplishments. I have done cool things and I plan on doing more cool things. Thank you, Danny for a wonderful book and the inspiration I got from it, oh, and Happy Birthday!

Kabob Spine Handmade Book

I have finally finished a project that was started a month ago. I made a book out of a heavy drawing cardstock type paper and Kabob skewers. Not quite sure what the name of this spine is but it was a dickens trying to get it to work. Of course it would have been easier if I had found instructions on the internet for it instead of going on memory. What is the fun in reading instructions;-)
After I finally got it together I painted and added pattern paper and ephemera. Once that was done I used this little book as my writing journal for nine days off and on.

Front cover

First page spread

Second page: There is a quote under the film.

Third page: I started writing around the edge.

Fourth page: My bird, Chickie chewed on my book, bottom of right side. Silly bird!

Fifth page: Made transfers with packing tape.

Sixth page: Made stamps out of wine bottle corks.

Seventh page: Kids thought Mom was silly for gluing chocolate wrappers in book. Hey! What ever is not nailed down I might use it in an art project;-)

Eighth page

Ninth page: I got a new purple Sharpie pen to write with.

Back cover

Well that is all of the pages that this fun little book contains. I hope to do another one in the future, perhaps I will read the instructions, or not!