This is my first spread in Maya'sjournal. She is working in the journal I made last month. One of her pages was an "about me" page. I thought that was a great idea, so I made one too. The bits and pieces that I added don't really have much to do with me except for the tiny photo of me when I was four. I thought later that it would have been a good idea to put things that related to my life in some way. I guess these are things that I picked out that appeal to me, so in that way they do relate to my life. I enjoyed painting on the pages of Maya's journal. The paper is more absorbant than the Mead composition books that I normally use. Quite a different experience. 

I haven't finished all the writing on this one, but thought I'd better post it while I had the camera home. I don't seem to be able to remember to bring it very often lately. I am so worn out by the end of the school day that I just get out of there as quick as I can. I don't have a prep period this semester and it's wearing me out. I just keep telling myself that I'll have a double one next semester. 

This one is a little more to my liking. The men in the boat came from a magazine and the rhino is a Durer engraving.  

I'm not too thrilled with this page. I liked the colors together at first, but it really doesn't do much for me now. Maybe it's because it was a big long list of stuff I wanted to get done on Labor Day and I didn't get much of it crossed off the list. 

Clippings from Wednesday's paper. 

Finished version of my August calendar. Most of the pages were done a couple of days later. I wish I would get back into the habit of at least writing on my calendar page daily. I didn't think about this looking like a chalkboard until after I went back to school. 

Compostion book journal. It has a quote by Jasper Johns and the Merry Pranksters signboard. 

The last one I finished in the collaborative journal. It reads: A hurricane hits with all its fury, but the worst news is the human cruelty. Images and reports of looting, snipers, rape and horror in the wake of Katrina. 

Another spread in the collaborative journal. The left page was one of the vintage pages that I made the book with. It was fun adding the color to it. 

This spread is in my collaborative journal. I was supposed to send it out yesterday, but I took the address and forgot the journal. I'll have to wait to send it til after Labor Day now. I hate it when I do things like that. 

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.