Journal Pages

  A few recent and not so recent pages. I love making journals that have staggered pages, pockets, fold outs and envelopes for stashing mementos in. This journal has all of those.

  I love this vellum envelope for storing ephemera tidbits. 

Can you see the Bin Laden face? It's from a firecracker we had this summer!

There's also a bit of text from an egg roll package in the envelope. Had to keep it as what it said cracked me up: 

P.S. In case of of emergency defrost 10 minutes and separate into individual pieces.  An egg roll emergency? Goddess forbid!

The journal page beneath the vellum envelope.
You can see one of my skull lino prints peeking though.

I was having a bad pain day and feeling left behind once again.
Best way to get over it is to journal it out!

Journal Pages

   When I work in my journal, which is every single day, I don't necessarily work in order. I jump around from front to back, to middle to front and even from journal to journal. Whichever journal is handy when I feel like working is the one I grab. I also vary what type of journal work I'm doing on any particular day. Some days it's painting pages, others collage and then there are the days I just sit and journal page after page after page.  It may not sound like a method, but it's my method and it works for me.
  If you look through my journals you'll see there is no chronological order in them date wise. But you can pick out themes. Certain things show up in them over and over again.  Today's post showcases three pages that have a theme to them, whether it was intentional or not. Usually it's not. Whatever happens to fall out of my head while I am writing is what ends up on the page.  But by looking at the pages you can clearly see certain things are on my mind a lot.
  In the case of these pages what's on my mind is poverty. Every day I try to remember that 1.4 billion people live below the poverty level of $1.25 per day.  Which makes me ask myself, do I really need that cool, binding system I saw in a magazine? Or to go out to eat instead of cooking tonight? The answer is always no. How can I justify spending money when so many have so little? This keeps me humble, and thrifty and driven to do more. I may not have much money wise or even material wise compared to some. But Icertainly have a whole lot more than the 1.4 billion who have nothing. Think about that the next time you shell out $4 for a cup of coffee (which I refuse to do, ever!). Maybe you'll decide that $4 can be put to better use.

  

April 20-22 Journal Pages

Just a quick posting today to show off a few of my latest journal pages. It's cold and rainy here this week so I've been hurting. I'm thankful I can still make art even when I'm in pain. That's one of the things I like best about art, you can do it anywhere! I make a whole lot of art while laying in bed, not just working in my art journals, but also making ATC's, small painted/collaged items, hand-bound journals, postcards, mini art quilts, etc.

I have a bunch of cozy spots inside and outside my house that I regularly create in. One of these days I'm going to photograph all the different places I work just to show people that making art absolutely anywhere is indeed possible!!!!!!

April 8-10 Journal Pages

It's Easter and my boy came bounding out of bed at 6:45 all revved up and anxious to start hunting for his basket and the eggs the big bunny left. I wish he'd bounce out of bed that easily and enthusiastically on school mornings!

We had a nice anniversary day yesterday. Hubby gave me a wonderful card that actually brought tears to my eyes. The sentiment it expressed was so heartfelt and very much needed at this moment. Although we didn't go anywhere the day was great. Very relaxing and peaceful. Also, fruitful. I painted and collaged a bunch of journal pages and hubby managed to get the big brush pile burned. A good day for it too as there was a slow to heavy drizzle the whole time he was burning. The boy was exceptionally well behaved. So much so that I wondered if the Pod People had come and created a different child who just happened to look like ours!!!

Tomorrow hubby has the day off and we're going to lunch and a movie. I can't wait. It has been ages since we've seen a movie in the theater that didn't involve talking rats, cars, mice or robots!

A few journal pages from this past week:

April 8--two page spread:

April 8--left hand side:

April 8--right hand side:

April 9:
April 10:

April 3 & 4 Journal Pages

I'm finally getting around to scanning in my pages for the past week. Some weeks I do it daily and other weeks I let it slide until I have quite a few to do. Obviously, this is one of those letting it slide weeks!

I finished 'The Sixteen Pleasures' by Robert Hellenga What started out as a great book, full of unexpected wisdom turned into a rather muddled, convoluted story that dragged on too long. Pity as the first half of the book was above par.

It's dreary here, with high winds and biting cold. We even had a bit of a snow squall earlier. I'm getting tired of being cooped up in the house and long for warmer weather to be the norm!!!

March 21-25 Journal Pages

Even though I haven't been busy blogging it doesn't mean I haven't been busy creating! I've been making charms out of found objects, painting journal pages, cutting images, collaging, journaling and cooking up a storm. My boy and I have been spending some serious time on Wizard 101 so I've been busy slaying banshees, cyclops, fire elves and other denizens of malice too. I'm just doing my part to ensure the cyber world is kept free of malicious beings, as any kick-ass Artzy Diva should!!!!

Here are five of my most recent journal pages:



The focal image in this one is odd indeed. But intriguing because of its oddness:

The focal image in this one is from a photography show invite. The photo is one my friend Tasha took then digitally edited. I'd painted the background of this page using a floral stencil made from a piece of scrapbook paper (those new, fancy ones with the cutouts). I was thrilled after the image was glued on and I noticed the flowers in the background and the one on the image matched! Serendipity in art is a wonderful thing!!!!

March 20 Journal Page

The first page in my new journal:

And the cover of it:

You can easily see that the journal is much shorter than it was when I showed it here. That's because I realized it was too big to fit on the scanner bed so I lopped the top off to make it smaller! In it's current incarnation it is roughly 8" x 8.5" but the pages inside are of various sizes. I love a journal that has different width and length pages. It makes working in it so much more interesting and challenging!!!!

I also love a fat journal and this one is certainly that: 112 pages total. I may have to take a some out once I really get working in it as the paint and collage work does add extra bulk. But, since I ring bound this one, removing pages is easy-breezy.

The Final Five

The Final Five pages in the journal I've been working in since January 1. There's 80 pages of emotion, laughter, tears, memories (both good & bad) and attitude in there. Lots of my personality and personal life. I didn't share every single page, but most of them. Which is fine because holding a little something of SELF back is the way I am. The way most people are I believe. Do you know anyone who shares everything about themselves with the world??? I don't.

Anyway, here they are. The Final Five in the BIG journal. Though, this journal won't seem so big once I'm done with the new one. It has even more pages. I didn't think I'd want to work in one with so many pages again, but I do so I am!

UPDATE: My boy's Lyme test came back negative. That's both good news and not so good news as it still means we have no idea what's going on with him & his health!!! He was definitely more lively today and managed to get through the week of school (no school tomorrow--teacher's only day) with no absences. A bonus for us as he's had more than his fair share of those lately and we're starting to get letters from the school.

I don't want to get my hopes up that whatever he has is gone now because every time I do his fever comes back and he gets all listless again. So far we've only managed two days in a row without a fever spike, but his temperature is still above his norm on those days (99.5 is the lowest it's been since Feb. 2). It's all very baffling.

March 14 Journal Pages

The pages I did today. First shown side by side, as they are in the journal.

The left-hand page:

The right-hand page:

Sometimes, no other words are needed.

New Journal Pages

I've been having a severe pain week so haven't felt like blogging much. At one point yesterday I was trapped flat on my back in bed. I couldn't roll over or sit up. I ended up staying that way for almost 2 hours until hubby came home and was able to hoist me into a sitting position. The real bummer was that my art journal supplies were on the bed next to me but I couldn't use them! If I'd been trapped sitting up at least the journaling could've continued! Maybe I'll paint something cool on my ceiling so the next time I'm trapped on my back I'll at least have something decent to look at instead of peeling paint and ceiling cracks.


These are almost the last pages you'll see out of my current journal because there are only two unused pages left! It's going to be a bit sad to see it full as I've been working in it daily since January 1!!!! That's a whole lot of journaling in one book. A whole lot of my life if you think about it.

But, I have a new journal waiting in the wings. I ended up changing it AGAIN. I realized it was too big to fit on the scanner bed so lopped the top off to make 1 big square journal and 1 small rectangle one. The moment I did it I knew it was right. It felt right, you know?

Update on Glaze Pens: I emailed Sakura to let them know about the issues I was having with the glaze pens leaking. They got back to me within a few hours and told me to send them all back for replacement. the woman said they had a seal issue with them, but that was over a year ago and she didn't think any of those would still be out there. Well, obviously they are and I received a bunch of them! I'm just glad they've offered to replace them and even said they'd add extra product in the return to cover my postage costs! Woo Hoo!

Recent Journal Pages

Some of the journal pages I've done this month. I've been doing two each day, one for each of the two journals I'm currently working in. The pages shown are all from one journal. When I get a chance I'll snap photos of the ones in the other journal so they can be uploaded.

PEN RANT: What the heck is up with Sakura Glaze pens???? A month or so ago I received an entire batch of them that were leaking from the top of the pen barrel (where the pen and tip are put together). Those were replaced and had been OK for a while, but tonight I grabbed a few out of my bin and discovered that they were leaking too. I've NEVER had this issue before with Sakura pens and am not amused to be having it now.

The Soufflé and regular Gelly Roll pens are fine. It's just the Glaze pens that leak. Very frustrating as I have a TON of these pens and use them ALL the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More Ephemera

I received a nice, big batch of ephemera in the mail yesterday. I love ephemera swaps and get a kick out of looking thorugh all the papers, feeling their textures and imagining how I'll use them.

Recent Journal Pages

It's been a while since I showed off any journal pages, so here's five from last week. The first two are my favorites. The colors pop and the image on the left side goes well with the image on the right even though I didn't plan it that way. Serendipity happens when you're in the groove!

I received a nice, fat envelope full of paper ephemera in the mail yesterday. I can't wait to use some of this stuff in my art journals!!! There's this cool piece of Warhol-esque Jesus wrapping paper in there. I'd seen the decorative tape before, and wanted it, but hadn't seen the paper anywhere. I am totally psyched it was in that fat envelope!!!!



We're having another snow storm here and the winds are howling as well. I'm getting to the point where I want to jump on a plane and head to the tropics!

Someone left SPAM comments on some of my posts so I've switched things to moderated comments. It's a pain in the rear to have to moderate each and every comment, but it's better than having a bunch of crap left in the comments section!!! Go get a real job SPAMMER!!!!

I've added some half pound ephemera packs to my ArtFire shop. I'll be adding more as soon as I can and will also be adding more art work, decorative tape and other supplies. Slowly but surely I will get the shop built up with cool items for sale!!