Tazo Tea

I loved the way the Tazo tea box looked when I opened it. They really know how to package tea. I couldn't get a decent photo, so I put it on my scanner/copier. The orange tea was pretty good too, but I don't like black tea and most of the teas included that.

Collaborative Journal

I made this spread in the journal I am working on with Maya. You can see the wonderful pages that she has done in it on her blog.

After church services Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, I finally felt like doing something Christmassy and used bits and pieces from my mail this month.

Not Quite in a Christmas mood

It's a good thing the family party isn't at my house this year. I haven't taken out one of my decorations. First it was a dumb cold and then we've had bad news about my mom's health. I'm just not in the mood. I haven't bought any presents either. We just have a few that we got earlier in the fall and the ones that I knit for Madelyn. I almost have the hat remade. I think I'm going to listen to the rest of the Number One Detective Agency and finish that at least. I made these journal pages last night out of bits and pieces that I've been saving for the last week. That and lots of whining.

Back to the needles

Knitting needles that is. I couldn't wait til Christmas and we tried Madelyn's hat, scarf and mitten (only one completely finished) on her today. The scarf is perfect and she likes it. The hat is a bit short. I'll have to try again. The mitten is short too, but she wore it for over half an hour in the house. I think she really liked it. Sheep's hat and scarf fit. I had made a smaller hat and it fits on his hoof as a mitten, so I'll have to make another one of those too. They looked cute,cute together. Madelyn was wearing an orange sherbert colored sweater and the light and dark pink looked awesome with it.

My First Mitten

Little bears seem to follow me home. I can't pass one up when they are sitting lonely at a thrift store or yard sale. This one is holding Madelyn's mitten (my first people mitten, I've made lots of doll ones) and modeling her Sheep's new hat and scarf. I also made Madelyn a matching hat and scarf.

That's Bay Creek in the background. The bear is posing in our bathroom window.

Cover for current journal

I got inspired last night when I saw this journal cover on Flickr. I am always amazed at how different mine turns out even when I think I am copying an idea. I glued a page from one of the books I made into an altered book to the front and back covers before I painted them. The paint stuck a lot better than it usually does to the composition book covers.

The flowers on the front of this are special to me because they were on a fabric bulletin board/collage that hung in my bedroom for years. I took it apart when we changed colors in the room and saved the things that were on it. These were so old and brittle that the paper sort of broke apart as I was cutting it in places.



The back has more of the flowers and some bits cut from old sheet music books. I just bought the blue duct tape at Wal-mart. I like the way it looks on the spine.

Snow Day and Tutu

The doodles are from last Thursday when I was waiting by the phone to see if we would have school called off for the snow. Here in Arkansas if we get any at all we miss school. The area below the date is a tracing from the pattern for the petals around the tutu I'm making my granddaughter. I have it gathered and the petals sewn up. I just need to turn them and sew it all to the waist band. I had no idea how to make a tutu, so I looked at the directions in a Simplicity pattern. I didn't actually buy the pattern because it was over $6 and it was in sizes 7-14 and I need a two.

This is the first page I've done in eight days. I wasn't very happy with it when I finished it, but I went on to do the covers of my newest journal which I liked a lot. I guess I needed a warm-up. Now that I look back at it, it's not so bad, just kind of plain.

Christmas cards

I put off making my Christmas cards about as long as I could because I didn't know how I wanted to do them. I did know I didn't want something that took as long as they did last year. I browsed online and found the three pine trees on a card. After cutting the stamp from fun foam, I played around with layering different papers that I had on hand. I had bought a package of green card stock from Big Lots to use in my Christmas scrapbook which doesn't seem about to materialize any time soon.

The cards are done now and mailed out. I always address them using Winvelope, but I lost both that program and my old Windows 3.1 cardfile program after my hard drive crashed last spring. They were both on the backup CD that doesn't work (bah!) I spent about an hour finding and installing Winvelope and finding a replacement for the cardfile that would read my address book created on the old one. After I finally found a good program, I had to download and install WinZip to unzip it. Still it was better than doing them all by hand.

First spread in the new journal

Working on my Christmas cards put me into a bit of a winter wonderland mood. I cut the Christmas tree stamp from fun foam.

Volume Five

I decided to try something a bit different with this journal. Inspired by the journal I made for my collaborative journal with Maya (see the August archives), I dismantled a compo book and replaced several of the pages with vintage papers. I made the book about 70 pages long instead of 100 since that's about how many I usually have in mine when I'm through with them. I used vintage music, brown paper from a bag, part of a cross word puzzle book, and a page from an old encyclopedia. I restitched the book using button thread.

I didn't get it exactly lined up and I'm really not sure it was worth the effort. It would have been easier to just glue in the pages. We'll see as I work in it if I do it again.

Volume Four Cover

I did the cover for the journal I just finished finally. I used copper metallic paint, mulberry paper, vintage sheet music and magazine cutouts. I still haven't done the cover on Volume Three for some reason. When I do, I'll take a photo of all of them together.

Last spread of Volume Four

This was the last spread of my fourth painted pages composition journal! I wanted to leave room here for postcrossing notes so it would be easy to find. I haven't been keeping up with my postcards that I send out and I wanted to know which ones I had sent where and when. This is the first spread I've done where I didn't paint all the way to the edges of the page. I kind of like the look.

Oriental mood I guess

I'm not sure why the cow wound up with this mix of oriental images except that the image has been laying on my craft table for ages. I helped Johnny to put up some calves and the meat-cow into the lot right before I did the spread too. Maybe that had something to do with it.



The image that I stamped only about 1/3 of it turned out, so I had to find something to cover it up with. I like the lady that I found in my oriental images folder better anyway.

My journal is back from Maya

The collaborative journal that Maya and I are doing arrived back the day I did this spread. I love the pages that she did in it. I finally sent hers back on Friday. I had planned to send it earlier, but I had a cold and stayed home Wednesday and then we had a snow day on Thursday.

Thanksgiving

I totally forgot to have everyone do a sketch this Thanksgiving like I did last year. I remembered when over half the guests were gone and I hadn't prepped a page. I found the little drawig on the left-hand page in the bathroom after everyone was gone. I have no idea which of the kids made it.

On the other page are some notes for a new altered book. I'm wanting to do a red/black/white one motivated by this.

Take the Magic Bus

Doesn't this view of Seatle look like something from the future? I cut it, the wandering bug and the frog for a different page, but none of them worked there. I went upstairs and grabbed a few things off my table to throw together this page. I'm constantly amazed at how things fit together.



I printed and cut out ~keri smith's 100 ideas to use as journal starters. This is the page that I put together to hold them. I glued about half of them to odd bits of paper, but I realized that gluing all of them would make them too bulky to fit into the envelope. That and I was getting too sleepy to continue.

Busch Stadium from the Arch ~ Journaled

I wanted to put a printout of my postcard into my journal. I had one page painted with some left-over paint and I was too tired to go up to my craft table and paint the other side. I did have my zippered pencil bag of on-the-road journaling stuff on hand, so I pulled it out and got to work. I kind of like the look of the paint and mostly pens on the right combined with the water soluable crayons on the right.

Elementary Times

I found the Cat in the trash er..recycling bin at the post office. It was on one of those kids book club envelopes. I brightened the red up with water-soluable crayon. I've been wanting to make a list of everyone I remember from elementary school. This wound up being more a series of memories about those people.

Self-Portrait Tuesday

For twenty-seven years I've washed dishes looking out this window. There is a beautiful view of the creek behind our house, but at night I see myself reflected back. 

I was fooling around with some pictures we took at the arch and came up with this. I'm going to try to see if I can get a version that I can have some prints made from for a postcard. I love the way is shows my sweet granddaughter. She loved looking out the little windows at the city.  

Total Frustration

2005-11-15
Originally uploaded by Crazyquilter.

I spent yesterday in a fog of total frustration. I couldn't find my glasses and had to wear my old ones to school. Not only are they old, ugly, and scratched up, but they aren't bifocals and I can't read through them. Thank God for good glasses that work. I found them after I came home on my craft table.

Knitting

2005-11-14b
Originally uploaded by Crazyquilter.

This background went great with my topic of the scarf and hat I knitted. I sewed a piece of the yarn to the page and used the label too.

Background

2005-11-14a
Originally uploaded by Crazyquilter.

Sometimes I paint pages a couple of days or more in advance. I thought it might be interesting to show what the background looks like and then post the finished pages.

The Journey

2005-11-14d
Originally uploaded by Crazyquilter.

My niece and daughter-in-law came over this week-end to do some scrapbooking. Some of the ephmera on this page is what was left over after the photos were cropped. I learned how to crop photos into ovals and how to round the corners. I really want to do some traditional scrapbook pages, but I can't seem to get started.

Written journal page

2005-11-14c
Originally uploaded by Crazyquilter.

Sometimes I feel more like writing than doing graphic pages. I used the left-over part of a sheet of pretty stamps. I like buying the pretty collector stamps to use on my postcrossing cards especially.

My first human-sized hat. I've made lots of doll hats. Of course I made this one without a pattern as I couldn't find one using the two yarns I wanted to use. Or at least I couldn't find one in the 10 minutes or so I was willing to give to the search before I sat down and started knitting. It looks less lumpy on, but I kind of like the way it looks off too ~ almost sculptural. I think I may be hooked on hat knitting. 

I've been knitting this week. I showed my daughter-in-law how last weekend and I guess having the needles in my hands inspired me. I went right out the next day and bought some Red Heard Light & Lofty yarn. I loved the color and texture, but at first I didn't like knitting with it. I've never knitted with anything larger than worsted weight yarn, usually something much finer since I mostly have made doll clothes. The size 15 needles seemed huge too. I took the scarf to work on during gate duty at the basketball game last night. I nearly finished it and it feels wonderful. Once I had knit several rows the knitting went much more smoothly. I made the hat this morning. I didn't use a pattern and it came out too short. I had planned to use a border of the Light & Lofty and do the rest in some knitting worsted that I found that just matches it. I decided to add three rows of single crochet around the bottom to make it fit better. It's kind of lumpy when it's not being worn, but I like the way it looks on.

The photo is one I took in the bathroom mirror because nobody was home to take one for me.  

I like the way silk flowers look on journal pages. I think this was one of those poppies you get when you donate to charity. I found the stamps first and the poppy was laying on my craft table. 

Another spread of random doodles and whatnot. The doodle on the top left is my husband's. He has stated that it's not safe anymore to even doodle. I guess it's not if you don't want them in my journal. I was trying out a technique with the hearts. It didn't work like I had imagined. 

I had no clue where this spread was going from the beginning until it was done.  

I seem to be on a clothes-buying binge lately. This skirt is one of the new ones I enjoy wearing the most. 

Sometimes I mostly feel like writing, but I still like adding some visual elements. I started carving this alphabet a couple of years ago. I add letters occasionally as I need them for a word I want to stamp. I added the F, R and D for this page. The flowers are stamped from a flower shaped eraser that I bought in a package from Dollar General. I added the black ink lines and the white ink center. I love the way it turned out. 

Two postcrossing cards, one received from Germany, the other one a scan of one I sent. 

I put everything but the kitchen sink in this one. I just love the Tuesday prayer that I copied from my Portals of Prayer book. The weekly prayers change each quarter and this one says exactly the things I need to pray for. I didn't want to loose it. I got the cute train stamp in a treasure box round robin swap that I particaped in. Several of the papers on this page came from the same swap. We just put in stuff we had extra of or didn't want any more and took out other stuff. Fun, fun. The hand stamp is one I carved as are the Y, C, B and other stamps on this spread. I'm thinking that the bottom left corner would make a good post card. 

I found another great journal.

jrnl 18
Originally uploaded by screaming lulu.

I came across this photo journal by Screaming Lulu on the flickr Art Journal group. I like browsing there lately which often seems to take up my own journaling time.

Wonderful Travel Journal

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Originally uploaded by winggleam.

I was looking through my Flickr contacts when I spotted this travel journal page by Suzette McGrath from the UK. I followed it back to her Madeira 2005 Flickr photoset. The whole book is wonderful. I just had to share it with anyone who stops by here. Her other journal pages are wonderful too which is why I had her as one of my Flickr contacts, but this journal just blows me away.