In My Art Journal

Happy Friday!!

I am particularly happy this Friday because my hubby gets home from being in Taiwan for 2 weeks! The kids have been great with helping out, keeping us fed and clothed since my arm is still broken. We were cracking up at the state of our home, though.  Seriously, between work, school, a crazy dog, and me being out of commission, we have just been keeping our heads above water!

When Mike travels I often spend more time reading than usual, and I end up filling his side of the bed with books, crossword puzzles, journals and such, as I cast them each aside as I drift off each night.

This time, it being the start of a new year, I busted out a brand new art journal and kicked it off by taking an online class with May Flaum called "Finding the Art in My Journal".  Here's the first spread I made:

I applied a few different shades of green and blue to the background, and spread it around with a paintbrush and a palette knife.  A little mist through a stencil, then taped in a couple of blind contour drawings, a little journaling, and called it done...for now.  I will likely return to it for more journaling and/or doodling as the mood strikes.

After working in so much black and white last year, the color and fun of paint and wet media was refreshing.  I'm looking forward to getting both hands dirty soon!  Next week I should be good to go!

Thanks for stopping by!  Head over to May's site, www.craftwithmay.com to check out her art journaling class and several other paper-crafty subjects!  She is true blue and down to earth and an empowering teacher.

Also, sharing on Julie Fei Fan Balzer's site for her Friday Feature, Art Journal Every Day.  So much inspiration to be found there!

Have a great weekend!

With Broken Wing

As artists, crafters, creators, makers, we often chat about getting into a creative rut.  One interesting tactic to break free is to limit the supplies at hand, to force new ways of thinking. I decided to ring in the New Year with a fresh challenge, with a different take on that advice:

What if I just limited the amount of hands I can use???

Brilliant!!  But, before I could second guess the reality of the plan, nor the logistics of implementation, the Universe slammed me down on the ice at a pop-up skating rink at our local shopping mall, and broke an arm.

That was December 30th.  Happy New Year.  Ring-a-ding-ding.

Oy.  I was already going to be off of work till January 12th and I had plans.  PLANS!!  Two-armed plans!!  Cleaning, purging, organizing plans!!  And after that, creative and crafty plans.

I asked the Universe, "What gives?  I thought my priorities were SO in line!?!"

Reflect...Analyze...Shut Up...Listen....

Do a little one-handed art journaling.

The One Little Word challenge for January is create something inspired by the word "Sing".  

I tried to sketch a bird with a happy face despite a broken wing.
 It sucked, so I settled with a feather to represent.

Hmmmmm.  I'm still trying to find the lesson here.  Though, I honestly think this was the Universe saying, "Hey, you do too much for the kids.  They need to step up and pull a little more weight around here."  Not that they don't when asked, but not much is really expected of them outside of personal hygiene, their studies, and a couple light chores.   

So, the kids have been quite wonderful, from cooking, to cleaning, to laundry, to just noticing me struggling to open something with one hand and quickly sliding in to take over.  They have made it easy to keep my spirits up, despite the obvious frustrations and limitations (imagine relying on someone else to button your pants and apply your deodorant.  Thank goodness I have developed some new strategies and flexibilities by now.) 

I'll tell you, though, I've been pretty antsy while laid up, side-lined in my arting and spending more time than I'd normally, poking around the web at what others are creating.  
Hope you are living, laughing, loving and playing today!
Thank you for stopping by!

Out With the Old: Some Unshared Projects From 2014

Hello!  I was organizing some photos the other day, as I was tucking 2014 into bed, and realized I had some projects that I hadn't shared here!  Would you like to have a look-see at some of my favorites?

Mini Albums

I love this mini album I made to record memories of a trip to visit my dear friend Christine in Denver. I adore the rustic piano hinge binding that I made using twigs that I gathered from the birch tree in my front yard.

Another dear mini album is the one I made for my dad for his 70th birthday.  Yeah, the cover doesn't really match the style of the interior pages, but I'm ok with that.  The focus of this project was to express the love I have for my dad, and I think that I conveyed that pretty well.

While presenting in front of a whole lot of family, I didn't want to provide explanation for this "Do Not Poke the Bear" card from Cocoa Daisy.  But, growing up my dad always referred to my mom as "The Bear", and during those smarmy teenage years he would often coach me not to provoke her with my attitude.  :)

Art Journal

I worked quite a bit in my art journal this year, and most everything in it was black and white work. I practiced sketching and shading, and I doodled and journaled.  

Scrapbook Layouts

Here are a handful of layouts to peruse.  I think all the seasons of the past year are represented, though chronological scrapping is not my thing.  My guides are emotion, nostalgia, and pretty paper.

I love that these kids truly love each other.
I hear them say it to each other all the time.

Love this bouquet of dried sage flowers picked up on a local walk.

Blaze loves the beach! It's nice to finally have a kid that enjoys it as much as I do.

Documented Bliss*
*Mine, not hers.

Jillian's costume from Halloween 2013 finally scrapped

Dorking out, just because it keeps me entertained.

Aw, sweet little ol' me.

Off-the-Page Projects

We started 2014 off with a fun commissioned project for our new local scrapbook store.  Anna, one of the other design team members, Mike and I worked together to build a huge magnetic chalkboard for the store's grand opening.  It was so fun to work on this project with Mike.  I must say, as difficult as they were, I truly miss those years where we worked side by side creating and running his bike company.  :)

Photo by Tonya Wade

 Here is a cute little gifty inviting a friend to Tea for Two.  I love that I had a couple of teabags from Trader Joe's whose tags perfectly matched the paper I used.  It's Ginger Pear White Tea, if you are interested.  Pretty good with a vanilla and white chocolate biscotti.

This was a failed attempt to do some free-motion sewing, challenged by the One Little Word blog to create something inspired by the word "aspire".  I didn't continue the piece, annoyed by puckering, impatience, and lack of stabilizer.  But I enjoyed the practice, and will keep at it.

In the meantime I finished these pillows for our sofa, which I hand-emboidered with the artsy look of free-motion sewing.  Mike drew the dogs for me and I traced them onto the fabric along with the words "sit" and "stay".  I crocheted a scalloped trim, and hope they send a welcoming invitation to our guests.

 Aw, here is Blaze modeling how to use one properly.  :)

This is another commissioned piece made for a teacher's retirement.  The kids later added their thumbprints as foliage to the tree.  

I love these little Halloween trees!  My favorite part are the tree stumps made from wine corks.  I painted the corks black and scribbled on them with gold glitter glue--totally looks like bark!!

Also, for the love of all things pumpkin, I crafted these wire pumpkins and tacked them to canvases.  One canvas I painted orange, and the other I left primed white.  I rather like both of them!

Here is another wine cork craft.  I made these cute place cards as a design team project for Craft Envy.  Just a simple circle folded into a rectangle and slipped into a slit cut into the cork.  

And finally, a gingerbread luminaria, which has been on my bucket list for a dozen or more years.  I had seen them in a Sunset magazine long ago, tried, failed, and have long lost the magazine.  I was able to come up with a great "construction" gingerbread recipe online that made for much more predictable and sturdy pieces.

So, there you have it, assuming someone actually made it to the end of tis monstrous post!  It is my intention to share more regularly in 2015.  I will be sure to put out more manageable sized chunks of content.  No one should have to take a potty break in the middle of a blog post!!

Thanks for stopping by!

OLW #84: LIGHT **Good Morning, Sunshine!**

The lovely Lisa Saunders has chosen "Light" as the Word Up this time around at One Little Word.  

I knew exactly the feeling I wanted to capture with this project, as I've been relishing it every morning now that the kids are out for summer break and our morning routine has become very relaxed.  

"Good Morning, Sunshine!"

Just some watercolor and black pen to document this luxurious nicety.  

Head on over to One Little Word to see what the Designers and other Wordsters have created this month!

Wishing you a lovely light and bright day! ;)

Monochromatic Poetry

I have this funky CD, Death By Chocolate that I bought on a whim at some point because of the band name and the cool album art.  Turns out it is a bit of a family favorite.  It's kind of 60's-psychedelic-lava-lamp with British spoken word and school yard chants and school book recitations(?).  But it's, well, smarter than that.  Very hard to explain.

The One Little Word this month is "Color" and I immediately thought of some of the short tracks on this CD which are titled with a color's name and then a monologue of objects and feelings about the color are listed.  It's quite poetic.


I thought I would do my own version, using the same colors from the album but with my own associations.  Knowing there would be a lot of handwritten words on the page, I opted to collage my title from letters cut from a magazine.  I think it also speaks to the seeming randomness of the poems themselves:  a bunch of unrelated words that together create cohesiveness due to the single color they conjure; the letters, all of various color, font, and size yet they come together to form words.

MUSTARD YELLOW

large envelopes

high school jackets

Pee Chee folders

#2 pencils

baby food and jaundice

Cowardice

rain boots

banana slugs

curried chicken

school buses and taxi cabs

flowering weeds

pollen, saffron, sulphur

Burning nostrils

caution tape

Yield

Slow

Bump Ahead

 SKY BLUE

cotton candy

swimming pools

worn denim

Mom's eyes

bubble gum ice cream

cartoon elephants

tropical seas

chlorine and clean laundry

toothpaste

robins' eggs, candied and real

Restful napping in a hammock

For a couple  of the colors, I couldn't think of enough items to fill the space I'd painted, so I just repeated my words to fill up the area.

ORANGE

sunsets

popsicles and Happiness

orange peel smiles

basketballs

pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns

carrots

kumquats

monarch butterflies

campfires and construction vests

tigers

orangutans

Fall leaves and Halloween

cantaloupe

San Francisco Giants

OLIVE GREEN

wallpaper and carpet

my teenage telephone

frogs

grass stains

damp forests

eucalyptus scented lotion

army men

dinosaurs

split pea soup

Frankenstein

spinach and herbs

concert smoke

Pop-pop's face after a roller coaster ride

I painted this face on a piece of deli paper placed over a magazine ad, loosely tracing the model's face with black paint.  Once collaged onto my background of blocks of color, perhaps you see that the idea was inspired by the CD's cover art.  

RED

ladybugs

fire trucks

cheerleaders

scraped knees

stop signs and stop lights

spaghetti sauce

Embarrassment

red cheeks

Kool Aid moustaches

Valentines

Santa's suit and Rudolph's nose

cherries

strawberries

Chapstick and cough drops

Passion

Anger

Love

Thank you for stopping by and checking out this creation!  Head over to OLW to see all the fabulous and COLOR inspired pieces by the designers and readers alike!  I'll be linking up to Friday's Art Journal Every Day feature on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog, too!