An artist's sign-in page for my collaboritive journal. I made two more pages last night, but the scanner isn't cooperating. That's me when I was three. 

Bags of Fun

I'm looking forward to starting my bag for this challenge. Flickr: The bags of fun Pool

Still here

I thought I'd better post and let anyone who is interested know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've just started back teaching and it has been a pretty stressful two weeks. Things seem to be settling down a bit now. I haven't done much art or craft/wise, just a couple of journal pages that I haven't taken photos of because I can't seem to remember to bring the camera home.

I did buy a pair of jean shorts to use for Sharon's Bags of Fun challenge. I found a girl's size 8 slim in faded black denim. I wanted the small size because I don't like carrying a large purse. I'm not sure about the black now. I'm thinking I might prefer blue. Maybe I'll make two.

First entry in my new found paper journal. I'm not sure what I'll do on the other side. I'd like to finish several pages before I send it off. Once I drew this picture, I had to try to photograph it lilke this. It wasn't easy! 

With all the found papers from the journal I made yesterday laying on my table this morning, I thought I would journal about the experience. 

I forgot to mention that I used the cover from an old encyclopedia so I wouldn't have to make a cover. I'll be using that trick again. I just glued the first and last page to the original endsheets of the encyclopedia cover. I'm already excited about looking for more found papers for my next try at journal making. I'm going to look for some maps, graph paper, and ledger paper. Who knows what I'll find? 

To sew the book, I used brown buttonhole thread because that was the thickest, sturdiest thread I had. Several places it shows. It might have been better to use a cream or off-white thread. The pages are sewn in four signatures (or booklets) of 8-10 sheets each for a total of about 80 pages. I can't wait to start working in this book. I'm enjoying just going through it right now and looking at all the different pages. I tried to put two of each plain paper together so that we would have a whole spread of each of those to work with. 

I hope I'm not sorry about using the old sheet music. I love the way it looks, but it's pretty brittle. I've already had to put masking tape on the gutter of one page. I used one thin brown paper bag and also a couple of pages cut from one of our brown feed sacks. 

Picking all the found papers to use in my journal took longer than the actual stitching. I tried to find papers that were the right size or that I could cut or tear to size. A few that I really wanted to use were smaller and I had to figure out ways to make them work. Some I just turned sideways and didn't worry about the fact that they were a bit smaller than the others. For a few I glued pages together to make one bigger page. In addition to the found papers, I used some sketching paper, some colored printer paper, and some heavy textured paper. 

I got busy this morning and finished my collaborative journal. I was going to take pictures of the process, but I got so into making it that I forgot. I used Daydreaming on Paper's instructions for stitching. The actual stitching went really quickly. I should have done it a bit tighter in spots, but for a first attempt I'm pleased with it. 

star diary

I love finding a whole journal online such as this star diary . This will take a while to go through. Sure makes me wish for DSL.

I sketched the Matisse the other day. Didn't turn out as bad as I expected it to since I've been really lax about practicing. The two pieces of ephemera at the top left are color copies of a piece from a styrofoam egg carton. Sometimes if I can't use the actual item because it's too bulky, I'll scan it. 

It's definately time to clean out the magazine corner. Most of these came by way of the library magazine exchange, yard sales, or for 25 cents at the book store. I keep having to collect fodder for my White Book. My rule is that they can't get higher than the milk can before I take some to the magazine exchange. Oops! By the way, J used these milk cans to put milk in before we were married. When he was a senior in high school, he milked over 20 cows by hand twice a day. 

I'm going with the same format as July for my August calendar. Hopefully I'll do a better job of keeping up with it. 

We have a challenge going on CompositionArtJournals to find pages online that inspire us and then share them with the group. The first inspiration page that I posted had neat writing at the bottom. This is my attempt at copying it. I think I should have been looking at the page when I did it because mine isn't nearly as cool. I will try it again. This is actually my second try. The first one I got the words way too close together and wound up painting the spread black to cover it up. 

I found these pictures in an ad for a combined museum exhibit. I enjoyed trying to sketch the Matisse. I'm hoping to win a Jeffrey Camp book from eBay that encourages practicing painting by copying the masters. That sounds like something I would enjoy doing. 

Something a little different for the July calendar. I decided that since some days I have more to write than others, I wouldn't make the blocks all the same size. I just made the vertical lines and put in the horizontal line after I wrote. Unfortunately most of July was done after the fact. I was an awful journaler for most of the month. 

And one written page makes 5 for the month, still on track with my self-challenge. 

Mom came home this week with the pictures her cousin gave her of my great-grandfather and his inlaws, my great-great-grandparents. We had never seen photos of any of these relatives. There were also several documents in Italian and a couple in English. J used to tease me about meeting dead relatives, but that's almost what it feels like. 

Homemade journal(s) here I come

Ever since I first came across WireWoman's wonderful hedgehog instructions I've wanted to try making a journal. I mean, she sells you on the idea! I'm getting ready for a collaborative project and I decided that this is the perfect time. I think I'm going a little bigger than the 3 ½ by 5 ½ Moleskine size just because that seems pretty small to me. I tend to work bigger. I also want to add some found papers to the thingand combine an altered book/journal in one. I haven't decided on a cover yet, but the display of colored duct tape at Wal-mart yesterday is calling to me. Why didn't I buy at least a roll of black?

After hunting around for papers to make my collaborative journal out of, my everyday composition book journal started to look a little bland. I got the notion to spark one of them up a bit too and immediately started to deconstruct a new one. I unstitched it and now I have all these sheets of long paper (some of which will go into the collaborative book) and a cover. I'm going to take my time and find lots of cool papers to include and then sew it back together. I'm betting the idea of this fabulous compo journal will motivate me to finish the one I'm working on now. It's close to half done. Of course the idea of tearing out more pages than I usually do has occurred to me too.

I'll still be working with my beloved compo books. They will still line up prettily on the shelf, a bit of a fixation for me. And, I'll have interesting papers to work with. How cool is that?

Blythe Blog

I put up my Blythe Blogtonight. I'm sure I'll be adding to it as I make more clothes for her and as I get around to taking photos of the ones I already have done for that matter.

I also updated the White Book blog yesterday.

My first try at a comic strip self portrait. It was fun. I'm pretty pleased with the way the page turned out. I think I may finally be getting back into the groove. Here it is 9:30 though and I haven't done a page today. Maybe I should count this one as two. Or maybe I'll do two tomorrow.
 

This is the back side. I think this is my most successful attempt at this type of spread where there is a smaller middle page inserted and the spread sort of goes over three pages. Usually they look a lot better from the front than they do the back. I like this one from both sides. 

This page wasn't going at all well until I got out the water colors and added color to the drawing. That helped a lot. The design is from a magazine photo of a design on a piece of furniture. The flower stamps are some pencil-end erasers that I found at Dollar General. There were 10 or so in a package for a dollar. I thought I'd get some and give my niece and DIL who scrapbook one too. 

One more photo of Blythe who is now called Chloe at my house. I knitted the sweater while I was waiting for her to arrive. The hat I crocheted a couple of years ago for an 18" doll. The rug in the background was made in the 30's by my great aunt. It makes a great backdrop for dolls. 

I thought since it's relatively clean that I would share a peek at my workspace. I also wanted to introduce my new Blythe doll. Since I spotted one on Craftlog earlier this spring, I knew it was only a matter of time before I got one. A friend sent me a link to one on sale and I thought about two minutes before ordering. I'm having lots of fun knitting and buying outfits. The one she's wearing was only $2 at Dollar General. I'll post a couple more photos here and then I think I'll set up a separate blog for her. I'm also going to make a separate compo book journal for patterns, etc... I'm trying to decide if I want to paint the pages. I've gotten so used to the painted pages that plain ones look *really* plain to me. 

This spread has journaling about the album I made for my granddaughter. The photo is the one I used for the front page. She is an artist in training and has used a whole box of sidewalk chalk down to nubs this summer. 

I found this cute album with a sleeve to hold it at Dollar General for a dollar. Right away I knew that I wanted to make my granddaughter a scrapbook for her second birthday. I tried to do it on Adobe Photoshop, but quickly switched to PageMaker instead. It turned out really cute and I think she will enjoy playing with it. I would love to find more of the albums so that I can print out a couple more of the scrapbooks for myself, her mom and other grandmas. None of the stores I've checked with have them. If anyone spots some, I'd love to have them. 

Just a quicky page for some email addresses that I got at an inservice. I was too lazy to re-write them, so I just painted over them. 

Finally getting back into the journaling. I like assorted pages like this one.