Variation on a theme

I was feeling really uncreative the other night, so I pulled out my stack of magazines. The first thing I saw was this article on math featuring the math head. I knew it had to go in my White Book. As I was painting the black background, I got the idea for the other spread for my Black, White and Red all over book. I need to scan some of the spreads in it and share them too I guess. It's a fun book to work in. I've been really loose with it. I liked the pages and decided to chronicle them here in my journal. The black flower that I journaled on is a pad from Dollar General. It came with a gel pen for a dollar, but the pen didn't work.

Shed sketch

Last Sunday I had some time before church, so I sat in the car and sketched an outbuilding at the edge of the parking lot. This is my first try at crosshatching. I'm not sure how successful it was, but I'm glad to get back to sketching.

I used a large headed straight pin dipped in acrylic paint for the green dots. I like how they came out in varied sizes.

Fruit Stickers

I love having this area to look at while I wash dishes, so I thought I'd share it. Yes, I'm one of those people who don't have a dishwasher. I do use paper plates ~ I know shame on me cluttering up the environment.

I've used this spot for ages to stash the stickers I take off my fruit until I do something else with them. Usually they wind up in my journal, but lately quite a few of them have turned up on postcards. I put on my postcrossing profile that I like fruit stickers and I've received them from Finland, France, Germany, Canada, Estonia and Israel. How cool is that? Maybe I'm just easily pleased, but I think it's so cool to see that oranges eaten in Finland come from Israel or kiwis eaten in Canada were grown in Italy. I never even knew that kiwis came from anywhere other than New Zealand. I really like the graphic little stickers just to look at them too. I googled and found this site, Fruit Labels - the web's first fruit label site, that prooves I'm not the only one who likes them. There is also the Flickr: orangepaper and fruit sticker group that made me aware that there were stickers on fruit in other countries.

Backwards?

I've been journaling backwards lately, so I guess I might as well blog the same way. I usually do everything chronically, but my journaling as well as my blogging has been really sporadic lately.

A Bit Blue

The day I did these spreads I was feeling sorry for myself. The first one turned out awful, so I needed to do the other one. I often find that if I'm feeling down working in my journal picks me up... but only if it turns out decently.

Spring has arrived!

Can't think of a thing to add to this. I'm loving the flowers and even the bugs so far. It's a bit colder today, but still definately spring. Too bad my spring break is over and I have to go back to school on Monday.

Wednesday with Madelyn

We had fun watching our sweet granddaughter even though she was recovering from a bad cold. I had the chance to sketch her while she was staying fairly still, well still for a two-year-old anyway. I'm not particularly happy with any of the three sketches, but they each have parts I like. It's pretty obvious that I haven't had much practice sketching people.

I mention in the journaling that when I came out with the pen and paper, Madelyn looked at me sorrowfully and said, "I don't have a pencil." Her grandpa got her a pen and she shared my paper. I put a bit of her drawing in my journal as well.

Bay Creek in Bloom

Redbud season is one of my favorite times of year on our farm. We have so many trees behind our house that the whole creek bank glows with the fuscia colored blooms. When I spotted the cows coming to drink a few minutes ago, I had to run out and snap a couple of photos. It was beginning to sprinkle, so I didn't stay long.

Orange paper and fruit sticker

A couple of months ago Kathrin from Germany invited me to put one of my journal page scans on her new Flickr orangepaper and fruit sticker group.



I've always liked fruit stickers and use them in my journal often. I fell in love with the fruit papers she had on flickr and we swapped postcards. She also sent me some of the fruit papers. They are great to work with. I love how they feel after they are glued down. I've already blogged about the cool postcard that she sent, but I had to put the awesome envelope and some of the fruit papers in my journal.

I enjoyed using her photos, here and here to print out and put on my pages.