More idea generating for sharing how-to's. 

I've been thinking lately about writing some how-to's for my style of journaling and sharing them online. I would love some feed-back on whether there is any interest in this or not. 

More circle punch cutouts. I'm really enjoying the design possibilities of cutting larger photos into circles. The bold stripes on these circles are the front bumper of a Mercedes Benz. When I added the plastic flamingo I had the color inspiration for the spread. I like using envelopes in my journal. It's a great way to keep adresses too. This envelope held images for my White Book (see link on sidebar) from Emily. The black stripes on the envelope came from a "found stamp". I found a piece of rubber something-or-other on the ground where we park our car. I had passed it over for about a week when it occurred to me that I might be able to stamp with it. It makes a great background or border stamp, and you can't beat the price! I'm thinking old car mats are worth looking at too. 

I must be wanting a new couch. I seem to be seeing photos of them everywhere. 

My new circle punch has really been getting a workout lately. I punched some thin craft foam to make a stamp for this page and added some pieces punched out of a magazine for good measure. 

This little plastic horse came from a yard sale last week. When I was little, I loved to pull the boxes of blocks, farm animals, and other toys out from under the stairs at my grandma's house. I'm trying to build up my supply of "grandma" toys. This little guy is standing on my art table right now. He's so cute, he may have to stay there for a while. I've been working on my White Book quite a bit lately, so it was handy to stand the horse on for this drawing. 

Book at Bargain Prices

I am not associated with this company in any way, but I wanted to pass on this great bargain on a wonderful book. I bought my copy at full price and love it. I am a big fan of Hamilton Books. Their $3 shipping no matter how many books you buy has gotten me in trouble a couple of times. I've always received great service from them.

HamiltonBook.com - THE DECORATED PAGE: Journals, Scrapbooks & Albums Made Simply Beautiful.

Prepping Pages

Dusty asked in a comment on my last post about what I use to prep pages and I thought I'd answer here in case anyone else wanted to read it.

I'm using the Mead composition books or sometimes an off-brand. I prep the pages with the liquid acrylic paints that come in the small bottles from Wal-mart. I usually get the 44 cent ones, but I like the more expensive one in black because it's shinier.

I usually put some paint down on a pallette. I use wax-paper. Sometimes I apply it right to the page. Then I smear it around with a sponge. I like a fine sponge. I get a whole package of them at Dollar General for a dollar and cut them into small pieces. One of my favorite backgrounds is to paint a border in a color and then put some antique white on the sponge and smear it around in the middle. The color mixes with the white and is great for writing over.

I have found that I can watercolor right over the lighter backgrounds and I've even used dark watercolor shades over a darker background. As for pens, I use gel pens in any brand, Zig caligraphy pens, and I like the new permanent Bic markers. I have also used regular ball point pens, but I don't like them as well. They tend to skip on the acrylic paint.

Since I started using the paint-prepped pages, I have had very little bleed-through. A couple of times my watercolor has bled through the page, but not the pens.

Of course I couldn't leave the back of the card plain. I'll be adding more to the right side of this spread, but I wanted to show the part with my great-grandma now. I just love this photo of her. 

My little sweetie's artwork, including a foot and hand print. No way I was leaving this out of my journal! You can see how I stitched it to the paper that I glued into the journal.  

Mother's Day card. I figured out a way to include cards in my journal without covering anything up. I tore my normal 1/2" or so stub taking out 4 or 5 pages. Then I sat my card on a strip of paper a little over one inch wide. I sewed up the center of the card/paper combo. Then I folded the paper together and glued it in between the stubs. It worked great. 

Journaling Hints

I just found this article on journaling hints by Teesha Moore. I like her style. I really need to try out the water soluable crayons she mentions. I guess I'll have to break down and order them online. I did buy some new permanent pens. I got both Bic Mark-it and some of the new colors of Sharpie. I like the Bic ones a lot better. The colors aren't as appealing to me as the Sharpies, but the smell isn't nearly as bad. I used the Bics on my garden plan page. They write great over the acrylic paint. I promised a while back to look and see what brand my wide white marker is. It's a Galaxy Marker, broad point, milky way white. It writes great on dark paint and magazine photos. I also love my Uni-ball signo white gel pen. It has a much finer line than the marker.

I picked the first lettuce and radishes from the garden yesterday. I've been wanting to catch up on the Everyday Matters group and I wasn't terribly hungry, so I thought I'd sketch my salad makings. The reds of the radishes and the light green lettuce looked so pretty. The collander is my favorite one. I bought it at a thrift store because it looks just like the one my mom has. No telling how much pasta hers has drained.  

This post by Wirewoman from one of my Yahoo groups really struck home with me so I printed it out and glued it into my journal. The glass is the first thing I've drawn in ages. 

I used a stencil I bought for the purple hexagons and then added more purple and some green stems to make it sort of look like flowers. It is suddenly summer here in Arkansas. Today it was over 90 degrees. 

This is my first altered dictionary page in ages. I stayed up late Friday night finishing it. The lobster photo just seemed to demand to be a dictionary page. Altering this dictionary was what pulled me into paper arts two years ago. I really need to post more of the pages in it some time. I have a few of my first ones posted at my old geocities site. My favorite altered dictionary page, I think, is my George page which is all about my grandpa. I made it in a round robin dictionary and then recreated it in my book. 

This is the first year in ages that I've written down my garden plan. Hurray for journals! Now I won't have to guess which banana peppers are the hot ones, or what varieties I planted. When I first started gardening, (Could it be 32 years ago?) I was faithfull to write everything down on a detailed plan. Somewhere in the busy years of raising kids, going to college and then teaching, I abandoned the planning stage. This one was recorded after the stuff was planted, but most of the purpose of a garden plan is still taken care of. So what if I'm a spontaneous gardener? 

New clothes, new circle punch and a rather odd photo of a rhino. I tried a different way of putting the paint on for this background and I like it. I dribbled on a thin curvy line of mustard colored paint and another line of silver and some dots of antique ivory. Then I took my fake credit card and spread the paint starting in the gutter and going both ways. Of course I had way too much paint so I did another background later in the journal with what was left. 

Tried a different style for my May calander grid. This one gives me a bit more space for each square. 

Travel

I've been eyeing the left image in the Anthropologie catalog for quite some time, but I didn't like the looks of the girl in the doorway. This weekend I had the thought, "Just cut her out." I got rid of the girl on the left page too.

Text reads:

I like the idea of travel.
Road Trip
No particular destination in mind.
Finding out what makes this place
Different from all others.
Unique, worthy of the time.
Scenic wonders,
Yes - written large on the land,
But also the marks made by man,
Quirky, individual from place to place,
From ridiculous to sublime.
I want to see.

It was time to lighten things up a bit I guess. This was one of those backgrounds that I had prepared ahead because I had some paint left on my pallette and didn't want to waste it. 

Mostly complaining about my cold. I did include some pacackaging from my new pens. I wasn't thrilled with the white packaging and the white of the stripes, so I smeared on some Ranger Distress ink on both areas. It kind of smeared the writing and I like the look.

This is the journal page I made the first day I started my White Book. I used pages that I had torn out of the book for a background. The bird and flowers seemed too big for the book itself, so I decided to use them in my journal. I'm thinking that I will start a seperate blog for the white book itself since I plan to add lots of pages to it. They are all alot more simple than this spread, but I think taken all together it will be pretty cool. 

I love the color on this page. I mixed copper acrylic paint with antique white in various shades. The little squarish dots are the copper paint used straight. The couple is my aunt and uncle who were married in the 20's and the house is their house in northern Canada. The blank spaces are for continuing lists that I'm keeping. I will add to them until the space is filled and then continue on another page.