Getting Ready for Vacation

I realize that many go shopping for clothes to wear on vacation. Well, not me! As soon as my husband and I decided to go to Oregon on vacation this summer I started thinking about what journal and art supplies should I take. Okay, I did think about clothes and if it was necessary for me to buy new ones. Maybe a new t-shirt or two and perhaps flip-flops to wear on the beach. Other than that I think that what I will wear is pretty much taken care of. Now back to what journal and art supplies should I take.
After searching Amazon.com and checking out the Michael's Arts and Craft store near me for journals I finally found one. I ordered the TreeLine List book from Amazon.com and it arrived a couple of days ago.

The company, Action Publishing has several styles to pick from. It took me a few days to decide on this one. These journals are very different from others that I was considering. The paper is cream colored with both lines and a grid layout. The left side page has the grid and the lines are on the right side. The covers are chipboard made from recycled material. There is much more about them and I will let you go and check it out.

The journal that I got measures 4.25 x 11 inches and has a tree theme. To help gauge the size of the journal I took a picture of it next to a piece of 8.5 x 11 inch cardstock. Why would I get such a strange size for a travel journal? Well, because it is different and will make me change the way I create in it. The size of postcards will be a challenge for me as will other bits of ephemera. I will manage somehow to get them in.
I also ordered film for my instant camera. Yes, instant as in the old fashion Polaroid type film, only these are small.
 The pictures are about 2 x 3 inches and just barely fit on the page of this journal. That is okay, because barely is better than not at all. If I turn the camera sideways then the photos will be printed in the portrait layout. In this layout they will fit on the page. I will take pictures both ways and all will be fine. I do not plan on taking my DSLR on this trip. I want to focus on little photos and most importantly drawing and writing about what I see. If I take my big camera then it is likely that it will be the main focus of my art. Another bit is that I want to have my photos in the journal within minutes of taking them, not when I get home and get around to having prints made. I do not have a lot of spare time at this point in my life to focus on making prints and putting them in my journal later. Most likely I will not get around to doing that. This is why I wish to use my instant camera and getting those photos glued down in my journal quickly. Honestly, the photos do come out quite nice. I am looking forward to adding more drawings in this journal and not as many photos.
Now to pair down or use a better way of transporting my drawing/painting materials. This has always been an issue for me. What should I take and if this pen or paint is left home what will I do if it is needed? I have a difficult time leaving a lot home, because I never know what my mood will be as far as which medium to use. So I take a lot. I do limit it to a small backpack, but still the way it is stored in the pack is annoying to me. I had been using various pencil cases, and although these are good at keeping the stuff safe it is not good for on the quick creations. I have to rummage around in the pack trying to find the bag that holds the medium that I am looking for. It just takes up too much time to do that. Doing a bit of research on Amazon.com I came across a solution. I found these roll-up pencil/pen cases. There are a lot of different styles and sizes to choose from, and yes it took me some time to choose a couple.

        I ended up buying these two. One holds 36 pencils/pens and the other 48. I got them with the intention of putting my Tombow markers in the 48 slotted one and my drawing pencils and pens in the 36 slotted purple one. The problem with this plan was that the Tombows did not fit very well in either one. They caused them to be very difficult to roll up. The Tombows also caused the purple case to come un-stitched, which I had to fix. So for now I have my Tombows in a pencil bag and I am still rearranging my drawing pencils and pens in the roll up cases. Not sure if I will be using both or just the one that holds 48. I have time to figure it out.
Before I wrap up this post I wanted to show the title page of the book. The page is not complete, but it is a least started. I will add more and perhaps take another photo of it when it is done. For now I think that this post is long enough. When we return from our trip I will post some photos and chat about how I did or did not like the journal.
Be well and be happy my friends. Ciao!

Helping Out My Artist Child

I had some of my art supplies sent over from the house that I was living in to my new apartment in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then I had to arrange my art supplies with my graduate school gear in an apartment that is not all that big, but big enough.
I love this place, but it was missing something. I also was missing something in my life. After doing the assignment with the hands for one of my graduate school classes, it dawned on me that I was missing a key element in my life. ART! My artist child was neglected for way too long.
Now that I have some of my art supplies, I can create art. Even if the creations are just doodling as I am taking notes in class, at least I am creating and satisfying that drive to create.
My next goal is to arrange my little basement so that I can bring over the rest of my art supplies. Then when I need some bits and pieces to go in or on an art project, I can simply go downstairs and gather what I need.
Now go create!

January 2010 Art Journal Project

I have ventured into yet another project. Milliande of Milliande Art Community for Women has started an art journal project in which we, those that wish to join in on the fun, will do a daily entry (with prompts) into our art journal for January. It is to start the year off with art. You can read more about it here and watch Milliande's fun videos of her doing her pages. It has been a challenge, but a exciting one to say the least. I am a day or two behind but that is okay, because there are to be no worries in this project. Anyway, here are photos of the pages I have done so far.

First and Second day: I made the Journal, which is a Teesha Moore 16 page journal  made out of a 22"x30" piece of watercolor paper. It is a fun and easy way to make a journal. After I got the journal together I pre-painted all the pages using  artist's acrylics in blue, red, green and some black to make the pages different shades of purple. Once the paint was dry I created the cover. There is a whole bunch of stuff going on in this layout, stamps, ink, embossing powder, collage, stickers....and so on.

Third day:  We were to add a large circle to our layout. I took photos with my cell phone camera while I was outside having coffee and reading. The photo on this page is of the sun and printed with my new Polaroid Pogo printer. I added a bit of white on the first few days work over the dark purple. The star is cut from a Christmas card and has glitter on it but the scanner does not pick up that very well.

Fourth day: This is a layout using a Pogo print of my cup of coffee. The challenge for that day was to add a checkerboard pattern to the layout. I cut a square from a styrofoam meat tray and then used silver metallic paint on the stamp. The stamp was used around the edges of the fourth, fifth and sixth day pages as well.

Fifth day: The assignment was to add a piece of old calendar or journal page. I just made a new journal page and wrote a bit about my day then I did some collage work on the page. 
Sixth day: Draw a tree was the task of the day. I drew three winter trees using pastel pencils. It took me a couple of days to finish this page because I wanted to find a quote from Thoreau's Walden. I just knew there would be a good quote in one of his chapters based in the winter. Here is the kicker. I did not just want to read the chapters, I wanted to read them while I sat outside. I live in Utah, Northern Utah where the high for those days that I sat outside was only 29 degrees. On one of the days there was a slight breeze, very slight but enough to make that 29 degrees feel a lot colder and because we live on the bench of a mountain there is still snow in our yard. At least the sun was not blocked by clouds like it usually is. Despite the cold though, I did manage to find my quote: Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. I wrote the quote on a piece of plastic, added a bit of gold beads and then used my heating tool to shrink the plastic a little. The page also has some vanilla inked 'snowflakes' with clear embossing done on them. The snowflake stamp was made out of a cork from a wine bottle (thank you, Gretchen;-).

Seventh day: Add a smile to your page. Well, I added three cute little smiles to my page. The photos are of my youngest son and my two grandsons and their funny little smiles;-)

Eighth day: Journal about our word or phrase for the year. I want to be creative every day, not just in art but in my writing as well. Thus far I have been doing very well at creating art and writing daily. Of course, it is only day twelve of the new year, but they say it only takes a few weeks to create a habit. If I continue at this rate my Create Daily creed will be a habit. Not just an "Ah, do I have to do it again!?" type habit, but a habit that I enjoy and I do enjoy it.

Well, that is all the days I have scanned into the computer. There will be more soon, I promise! For now, I wish that you all have a word or a phrase that will carry you through this year and perhaps beyond and that it is a joy.

Now go create something!

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!

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!

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 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!

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!