A quote...

Sometimes I spend time chatting online with my hubby when he and I should both be working. One day he was describing someone he heard talking nearby. He has quite a descriptive way with words. And the images conjured are usually very funny ... and sometimes just a bit painful.

ouch

OK...now what?

Have you ever made up a page and then wondered what the heck to do with it?  That's where I'm at now with this one.  We watched the first Harry Potter a few nights ago and I found myself doodling what happened to be on the screen at the moment.  So now I have this really cool looking page.....

...and absolutely no clue what comes next. 

March calender

This one is waaaaaaay too green. I scanned this in before I tweaked the squares. I just got them too darned dark. And it took me forever to get enough gesso and white paint on them to make it good enough for writing.

You see, I was hoping that I would find a good white ink pen to use on the dark squares by the time I was ready to start journaling for March. Nope!  I keep trying new pens and they keep failing. They either have ink that isn't opaque (even though it SAYS it is on the package) or it doesn't flow evenly (either the ball point clogs up or the ink comes rushing out in a puddle on the page). So I just painted the squares white and I'll use a regular pen.

I even tried a white out pen. It hemorrhaged all over the page that I tried it on.

It does kind of bum me out because I had those squares pretty nicely painted before I cut the paper up to glue onto the page.

I used the cheap, but nice watercolor paper again. I had been playing with some Rit dyes that I had all mixed. I put some into a spray bottle and added some superfine PearlEx gold powder to the bottle. Shook it up to mix the powder into the liquid dye and sprayed it all over the watercolor paper. Voila!  It looks just like that shimmery stuff that you buy already mixed. I have about 15 different boxes of Rit dye and an impressive stockpile of PearlEx in jars. There was a closeout sale.....I got them for 50 cents a jar.  Yeah....I'm good. lol

Well....I've stayed up too late again so I'm off to dreamland. 

More watercolor fun

This one took a long time to color in but I think it was worth it. I really love how it turned out. I'm not too concerned with anyone being able to read the journaling. There isn't really anything personal on this page and my handwriting is difficult to read at times anyway.

I wonder sometimes about why I get so frustrated with the world and why people can't acknowledge reality. And why people keep repeating the same mistakes in their lives without ever giving thought to the possibility that the problem might be THEM. *sigh*

 I really like the fashion silhouettes font that gives me these great outlines for stencils and masks. I'm having great, cheap fun with cutting my own free stencils.

I also kind of like this opposites effect that I did for this spread.

I'm really liking the watercolor crayons. Somewhere in a box (familiar phrase to anyone who has made a move from one state to another and still has unpacked boxes in the garage)  I have a set of watercolor paints in tubes. I should go look for them.

Egads..... it is getting late. Almost midnight and nobody needs mommy for anything. I think it might be safe to go lay down.

Another snarky day

There are some times when I would really LOVE to say things out loud to people. Frankly speaking, my husband is the diplomat of the family.  The closest I get to diplomacy is asking someone if they really want the opinion they have just asked me for... because I WILL give it to them. 

I'm the type who really does prefer to sit alone in a corner with a book.  I think I get it from my mom. We both generally get along with people, but when asked for an opinion we usually tick somebody off.  Her dream of retirement was to get a cabin up in the mountains and sit on the porch with a shotgun and an old hound dog and shoot at anyone who came up the road. lol  I love that mental image. I'd probably be the one buying her ammo every week. rofl.

I made several stencils and masks from a font that I picked up some time ago. The font is just retro fashion silhouettes. One set is from the 1950's and 1960's and another is fashions from the 1940's.  I can't wait to use that one! 

I have a ton of copier transparencies. I just print the outline of the shape I want onto the transparency (the ink only needs to stay long enough to be cut out), then I cut along the outline very carefully and I get a stencil and a mask at the same time.

I also keep old gift cards and cut the edge with a pair of decorative edged scissors for spreading paint. 

So far so good with my goal of not buying any supplies for this journal. So far this project has been absolutely free.

Many of my acrylic paints are about 10 years old. Some of them are even getting a little lumpy. I don't mind. I just call that "extra texture".  They're leftovers from the days when I did set painting for some of the local community theater groups when I lived in Michigan years ago. I have a very wide range of some really odd colors. I can't wait to use them!

Zombie prevention fluid.......

Yeah, that's what coffee is. Though due to certain medical circumstances recently I have had to give up caffeinated beverages. Now....giving up soda pop was pretty easy. Easier than I had expected. Giving up my iced tea....way harder.  At least I was eventually able to switch from regular coffee to decaf and still have my iced coffee every day.  I don't like being sleepy all day long though. I rather enjoy being hyper-active. I get more stuff done.

I played with this one when I decided to open the watercolor crayons that had been sitting on the shelf for almost a year.   I have to say that they are quite convenient. I have this neat little brush/pen sort of thing that you fill with water. So I can take my crayons with me and have the water pen to do the painting thing when I get super bored somewhere.

Favorite month

February is very special in this house. It is the month where we celebrate the anniversary of when we adopted our daughter. Gotcha day is in February and it is better than Christmas, Thanksgiving and DisneyWorld put together.

I got a Cricut cartridge awhile back that has neat paper dolls and clothes and this one looks like my daughter so I used it for this page.

You also get to see just how exciting my daily adventures are (looking forward to laundry) and how well I keep track of days. lol

We had to get the dishwasher and the clothes washer fixed in the same month. I love machines...except when they break.

I love dragons

Years ago I discovered an artist by the name of Amy Brown. Her particular specialty is dragons and fairies. I always loved one of her drawings so much that I spent several hours looking at it and drawing it into my journal. It isn't nearly as good as her original but I do still love looking at it.

I later added a quote of mine "They might be real, remember we haven't discovered everything yet"

Yeah, I haven't re-scanned the page since I added the quote. I'm basically lazy, remember?

General fiddling around

I don't quite know what to do with these two pages so I'm going to leave them alone. They look quite nice on their own so maybe no quotes are needed.

Another good Quote

I love reading Somerset Studio. In the last couple of years there has been a column written by Bruce Adams. I have to say that his Accidental Crafter column is one of the most entertaining articles in every issue that I have read.

Recently there was an issue focusing on fashion. So he did his column as a reflection on the main theme of that month's issue and his opening line described me perfectly.

I have always taken pride in the fact that I consider myself more functional than decorative. Blue jeans, t-shirt, plaid flannel shirt or hooded sweatshirt or my Tigger sweatshirt.

When we got back from DisneyWorld (I drove there and back) I was tired and had no desire to get fully dressed. So I put on my comfies and essentially told the world to leave me alone for a week. I had my Tigger sweatshirt, my Tigger flannel jammies that my mom made for me, my Tigger slippers, my Tigger insulated mug and a pair of Mickey ears that light up.  Yup! Fashion disaster but oh so comfy and warm. Because we went down there in December to Florida and it was flipping cold up here when we got back. I wanted to turn the truck around and leave again but I think my hubby's employer might have had a word or two to say about that. ;)

 Yeah, definitely more functional than decorative. LOL

A good use for clip art

There are often days when I am....cranky.  I made this page on one of those days. And I refer to this page frequently when something really ticks me off.  It makes me laugh and calms me down. Even if I do still long to cripple..... someone......

I am not sure who to attribute the quote to. I think it might be Oscar Wilde.... I tend to like many of his snarky quotes.  I might find out and come back here to confirm or correct the attribution but be forewarned...... I am basically lazy and once something is written I leave it alone. 

Unless there is a really BAD spelling error. Then I might come back to fix it.  I'm weird that way.

I'm terrible at titles

I didn't take a picture of the first couple of calender pages of my journal before I wrote down stuff so you'll be able to see the loopiness of my thoughts when I write.

Seriously, there are some days where there is just nothing to write down. Nothing at all. My life is so exciting. LOL

This was my first month page and I had some watercolor paper that I had been using as a sort of drop cloth. Yeah, I know.... "watercolor paper as a drop cloth?" . I happened across a pack of paper that was priced at $4 in a craft store so I bought it. When I discovered that it was nice watercolor paper (the pack was unlabelled) I went back to buy the rest but it was all gone. So rather than hold on to it to use for something special (which as you know translates to never using it at all because I can't get more), I decided to use it to catch splatters and then cut it into squares for inchies or whatever. This sheet made nice squares for the calender.

I also decided that the "high art" would be stick figures. The squares are too small for much else. ;)

Getting caught up

I took a long vacation from blogging. I'm still not sure if I'm fully back, mentally speaking, but I'll give it a shot. 

I've spent a lot of time just homeschooling my daughter and doing general housework. Just spending time being a mom.  I must say it is paying off because she is becoming a splendid artist. However, she hates to write. So I have spent some time recently making an art journal. She is starting to copy me a little and I think she's hating writing a little bit less than before. ;)

I got the idea from The Kathryn Wheel after a day (or two) of blog hopping.  I think she's come up with some fantastic journaling ideas and I'm taking it into the realm of homeschooling.  Eventually my daughter will see that writing just a little bit every day turns into a lot of writing that is interesting to read later on.
 
I hope so anyway.

That said, I took a long time to decide if I was even going to blog about my journal. I had a lot of attention for awhile when I was doing the digital art thing and I wasn't sure if I wanted the attention again. I'm still not sure but I do like to show off my art work.

I also like to do things for very low cost, even for free. I hate spending money. So I have an additional challenge for myself with this journal. My goal is to use up as much of my art supplies as possible without buying anything new.  I have left myself the single exception of the base color of acrylic paint that I have chosen and that is yellow. I have many different base colors for many of my pages but the one I do not want to run out of is yellow.  And two of my local craft stores have basic acrylic paints (store brands) for 50 cents a bottle. So far this year I've spent $2.  Not bad.

The other thing is that the journal will not be a lot of mixed media. It is mostly painted. I did do the first three months using paper squares for the calender days and I decided I didn't want to add anymore thickness to the book. I'm thinking that limiting myself to just paint might make me stretch my abilities.

I've also been cutting my own stencils from some copier transparencies that I got from my mother in law when her work was getting rid of several boxes. I could conceivably end up making about 900 stencils.  I don't think I really need that many stencils but then you never know what sort of weird patterns I might like to have on my pages. 

And the book I got for free! My library gives away books on a free shelf just outside their main lobby. This book has a nice cloth cover, it's as large as the big journals from the art supply store and it has really heavy duty paper. The really nice thing is that the paper doesn't curl up when it is painted. I decided that I want this journal to be for just one year so each month has about 8 pages to it. The main calender type page and then other pages for random art and more personal journaling. That way I can keep the truly personal stuff offline and I can still share some of the artistic stuff here.

So today I want to post the first page I did where I celebrated the ending of the year 2012.

I hated last year for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was the death of my grandma. I'm glad to be rid of 2012.

I'll post some more in the next couple of weeks to get caught up. I hope. It's interesting how busy life gets when you homeschool.