I had some fun with gel pens again. I tried some preliminary sketches of my doll for the Everyday Matters challenge, but it's not going well. Part of the problem may have been the gel pen, but I suspect it's just that I'm not confident with faces yet ~ even doll faces. 

Eggplant Art Studio: The Journals

Somehow I've missed Eggplant Art Studio: The Journals until now. There are some nice journal pages and book covers on this site as well as some thoughts about journaling in general.

An experiment with oil pastels. I scribbled them on and wiped them off with a dry wet wipe. The pens came from a package that I had bought and forgot. It was a nice discovery finding them. They are called Starlightz Glitter Gel pens and not at all what I would have expected, more a metallic look than glitter. They wrote just fine over the pastels, tended to smear when wet and took a while to dry, but seem fine now. They were $3 for a package of 6 or so at Dollar General. I really like the paragraph from the Sappi brochure.  

I had to tip in the cover of the cool brochure I ordered online. I used the oil pastels to add some color to it.  

This is one of the pages where I had pre-painted the background. I added the images and quotes last night as I was going through magazines to get rid of some of them. I have them stacked next to a cream can and I've decided that if they get taller than the cream can some have to go. Next to the caption "Answer Book" I wrote ~ It doesn't have to go together, to match in theme, or even to make sense. This book is for trying out, for saving, for no other reason than just the doing. Pretty much sums up my thoughts on journaling at least for today. 

For some reason these images went along with the journaling about my two days of migraines. I'm not sure why. I like the way the background for the journaling turned out. I painted the page first with antique white acrylic paint sponged on and then lightly went over it with a sponge dipped in black and mostly rubbed off on another piece of paper. 

Green Gluecards for the Gluebook list swap. We're studying Latin America in my geography classes. When I saw the painting of the Mayan girl with the tree it reached out and grabbed me. The background that peeks through all three cards is some sort of undersea plant. It was in the same issue of National Geographic. I hope my swap recipient likes them. They are quite a bit different from what I normally come up with although looking back through my pages in my journal, I think I can say the same thing about lots of the pages. Hmm... I wonder what that says about me? 

And in the morning he drinks tea, or sometimes coffee. I collected tea bags with the idea that I would use them in my favorite cup spread. That didn't pan out and I was tired of looking at the saucer full of tea stained tags, so this spread is what I wound up with. I love the little bird. That was totally unplanned. 

A couple of weeks ago I read a journaling hint to collect something random for a week like price stickers, tpe samples from magazines, the letter A, etc... I choose tea tags. I didn't much like the stark white, so I laid a wet tea bag in the saucer with them every time I thought about it. I thought it was kind of neat when the tags in the new box turned out to be different. Kind of like I was recording a change. These tags are all from J's tea. I only drink herb tea for the most part. I bought some Celestial Seasonings tea thinking I would get neat tags and packages. Pooh! There weren't any. What brand of herbal teas have the neat packaging? 

Sometimes I wonder why I choose the images I do. I guess these went together because of the color. I'm trying to tempt myself to start sewing again by saving photos of clothes I'd like to make. This was a make ahead background that I was looking forward to journaling on. Sometimes I put too much paint on the wax paper that I use for a pallette. I can't stand to waste it, so I go a few pages ahead in the notebook and prep a spread there. 

Barb Berry's journals

I love seeing what other people are doing in their jounals. I found thesejournal pages tonight and thought someone else might enjoy seeing them.

Luna Jaffe Designs: image cards

These image cards are an interesting idea for journaling. I like the cards, but the same concept could be applied to a regular journal too. I have a hard time believing that some of the ones she shows were done in the 10-15 minutes that she recommends taking though.

visual journaling with sonora beam

Surfing just now, I came on this article on visual journaling. If you need a push to start a journal here it is.

I couldn't decide on a favorite cup for the Everydaymatters challenge this week, so I drew a whole page full. I had forgotten all about having the pretty antique tea cup at the bottom.  

I decided to make another calendar page. I kind of like looking back and seeing the month at a glance. 

How long ago was a new refrigerator $148.88? I went up to journal tonight not having the slightest idea what I was going to do. I put the colors down on the page and picked up a 1958 dictionary that I have looking for inspiration. I found a piece torn from a newspaper with a worked crossword puzzle on one side and a refrigerator ad on the other. The first thing to catch my attention was the $5 down. "Hey," I thought, "This must be old." I wanted to add something from the dictionary too, so I looked for the definition. It reads: A box, room, etc., for keeping foods, etc., cool as by means of ice or some other cooling agent. The new definitions, of course, don't mention ice. The rook jumped out at me and wound up on the page too. I love the serendipity of journaling! 

I came home from work on Wednesday to a yard completely full of robins and a smaller brown bird. They were hopping everywhere. I'll bet there were a hundred of them. I sat in the car in the sunshine for ages just watching them. One of the little brown ones came so close that I could see that the feathers on its back under the wing were fluffy down. Maybe it wasn't quite grown up yet. The bird is cut colored sections of the newspaper that reminded me of the robins' red breasts. What you can't see is that the strips it is standing on show the day, date and year - also cut from the newspaper. I was a bit irritated at myself when I tried to read it later and it had big holes in it.