I got out my glue this morning and lots of bits and pieces that were laying on my art table. This was the result. That's a photo of me at age 12 on the upper right side. The rest are magazine clippings, a Bible page, the stencil from my December daily grid, and a puzzle piece that I pulled apart and painted. The text reads:

Somewhere buried inside there is an artist who wants out,
To share a view of the world that is unique.
A little girl who remembers what it is like to focus
For an eternity on a stream of ants

Going busily about their day.
Or just to bask in sun with nothing on the agenda,
Or no worry about a burn.

Maybe the secret is just to open up,
And let it pour out.
No big thoughts about what you are doing,
Whether it is worth the time it takes to do it,
If the time would be better spent doing something else.
Just let it all flow out.
And then later there is time to reflect.
If there needs to be judging, it can be done then.

Maybe the letting go is the seeing.
The ability.
Because that little girl is still there,
With her wise-silliness,
And her yearning for the moment.
And her burgeoning power to disect the mundane
And make it into something worthwile.

I decided to try something different yesterday. We were babysitting my granddaughter and I tried to write a bit all day long as I got a free moment. I should have had several more pages prepped to do this though and didn't so the rest of the day is on a piece of printer paper that I will insert into an envelope glued into the next spread. I'm not done with that one yet, so I'll post it out of order when it's finished. Madelyn actually helped me with the printer paper page as she wanted to try out the pen I was using. She scribbled all over my writing. She is getting quite proficient with writing utensils. 

DSL may be on its way! I sure hope so. After trying it out at my son's I am impressed. As I wrote on this entry though, I am a bit pessimistic since we live so far out in the boonies. The customer rep assures me we will get it. On the right side of the spread I put some notes about my daily grid drawings. I have one more to do today and then I will post them. I'm pleased with the way this two weeks worth have turned out. If I don't have one done before bedtime, I just sit down and do one. That won't work once school starts back up. I'll have to plan better then to work it in. 

Assorted page from 12-29. The chair is a doll chair with a small Santa mug on it. The envelope is from my niece. There is a book mark inside. She made nine of them at my house for gifts. 

Before I could throw away the wrapping paper scrap with torn snowmen, I had to try to paint them. I love the way this turned out. Way different from anything I've done before. Unless of course you count the writing above it which I have tried before. This time it was more successful because their was more contrast in the ink colors. This is such a fun style. I never used to like light blue, but it is really starting to appeal to me especially when used with dark red. 

I liked this wrapping paper so well that I decided it needed a page all to itself. I cut out the snowman and copied the colors of the background. This is the first time I've used the snowflake stamp. I got it in a grab bag. It was part of a stamp that said, "Frostie's Baby Picture." I cut it out carefully so that I could still use it with the phrase. 

We were thirty one for Christmas Eve at our house. It was a lot of work, but enjoyed by all. It was so hectic that I didn't think until tonight to save some of the wrapping paper. Thankfully the trash doesn't run till tomorrow. I was able to dig out quite a variety. I'm hoping this will be just the first of my Christmas pages. 

I'm hoping to get back into daily journaling. For some reason this spread reminds me of the Keebler Elves. 

Kitty in the Window

Harry is an outside cat, but he loves to lay in the window and watch what is going on inside. We had our first snow of the year last night. You can just see the creek in the background.

Is it a journal or a Daytimer?

Putting menus, addresses, lists, receipts, recipes and other things along that line in a journal makes it function like a Daytimer and also a daily record of my life as well as a creative outlet.

I like the idea that I or someone else may look back at these books years from now and see not only what I was like, but a see bit of general daily life too.

I was going to just put parts of this menu for the restaurent we went to yesterday in my journal. Then I thought, hey, I can put the whole thing in there and I'll have access to the menu. It's a tri-fold menu and it functions great in my journal. 

I'm starting a little experiment. Several people on the Yahoo lists have advocated doing daily sketches in a matrix format. I'm thinking that might be a good art goal for next year, but I thought I'd try it out for the rest of December before committing to the idea. I'll post this page again in January and we'll see how it goes. I'm sure I will at least love laying out the matrix for each month. 

A little spring in the middle of winter I guess. I'm not sure why tulips and deer go together unless it's the fact that on our farm the tulips have to grow in wire cages or not grow at all because the deer find them delectible. 

I loved making a page to incorporate the mail art that I received from Salena. It was fun to try to match the style that she used, but difficult to come up with something that wouldn't detract from her art, but hopefully show it off. I like what I came up with and it will be so cool to look back through the journal and remember seeing that burst of color in my mailbox. I really liked the dots of copper on black that Salena used and enjoyed using both the big dots and the tiny ones on the letters on my page. 

I had a hard time deciding what to put on this page that wouldn't detract from Salena's awesome envelope. I finally decided nearly a week later to just do some journaling. I had to go by Dollar General and buy a new copper gel pen since mine was dried up. I do love the look of metallic gel pens on black. 

My first mail art! I just love it. I've sent out several decorated envelopes, but this is the first time I've gotten one back. It was so much fun spotting the burst of color in the mail box. I didn't even open it until I got home because I didn't want to mess it up. I carefully slit it open at the bottom so I could incorporate it into my journal. In addition to getting the cool envelope, it was stuffed full of great collage bits and pieces. I can't wait to use some of those. Too bad I've been such a slacker this week when it comes to journaling or I would have some to show I'm sure. 

This is the back of the decorated envelope from Salena. The note to the postal workers must have impressed them. They didn't even postmark the stamps. 

Phone doodles. I've always doodled when I'm on the phone. I decided to preserve a few. I also spotted some doodles of my husband's and added one. He remarked that it isn't even safe to doodle anymore. I stamped the border with an eraser stamp. 

We put our Christmas tree up earlier this year than we ever have before. After not having a tree last year, I was ready to get it up and decorated. I carved an eraser stamp for the background after seeing a similar background on page 77 of Making Journals by Hand by Jason Thompson. I love the way it turned out. I imagine I will be using this stamp a lot and it was so simple and quick to carve. The photos didn't print very well. I think my printer is running out of yellow. I put a yellow glaze over the whole thing trying to make them look better. I think it just made them harder to see. It did give the page a neat texture though. The grape label on the back of this page really caused it to wrinkle. I usually don't have much trouble with wrinkling. I used embossing powder on the start at the top of the tree that I journaled on. 

This picture shows the whole tree. We always cut a cedar from the farm. 

In addition to the scrap ornaments, I made several crazy quilt ones in 2002. This year we bought glass balls for the first time and also the gold snowflakes. 

This is one of the Victorian ornaments I made in 2002. I decided to go with a new theme for the tree for the first time in 30 years. I printed off lots of Victorian scrap from the internet and had a great time fashioning it into ornaments.  

Links to the past? A slave to the future? I am inspired by both, but not beholden to either. I cut this text and the shoe, the portrait and the door from an Anthropologie catalog. The other things are just bits and pieces from my week. 

Lots of bits and pieces laying around my work table. I really like these new blocky alphabet stamps that I got at Wal-mart for $4. When I spotted the blue footed booby in a magazine, I knew that it would wind up on a page sometime. I've heard the expression - You're dumber than a blue footed booby - all my life. I had never actually seen a photo of one, but immediately recognized what it was when I saw this one. 

The background which turned out looking to me like a chicken coop inspired the addition of a bird. The textured background was stamped in acrylic paint from a piece of foam kneepad that I pressed into our electric heater after heating it in front of the heater. I've had a lot of fun from this kneepad that I bought at the everything's a dollar store. I embossed the key in the bird's mouth which was stamped with a Stampin' Up stamp. The paper bits all came from some vintage piano music except for the color copy of a photo of my grandma and a friend laying on a haystack that I placed in the nest. I don't sing, but I think that I was relating this page to my attempts to learn to draw from a book. Maybe what I need to do is just draw! 

The stamp that I used here which I also used on this year's Christmas cards is from Biblical Impressions Rubber Stamps - Christmas Pictures.