Nearing the end of my seventh compo journal

Sometimes when I'm in a down mood journaling perks me up. Sometimes, as below, I just wind up with a dreary, whiney journal page. I put it below because I couldn't stand the idea of starting my blog post with it. My second try worked out better. I started the page above with varying shades of purple. Light and cheery. Before I was done I had darkened it considerably. Notice my notes to myself encouraging my mood to lift, lift.

I get tickled now when I look at this page. I think that evening the blue gate finally did the trick. I really want a new gate in my back yard going down to the creek. You can see it from the kitchen window and I'd dearly love to find a vintage one to hang there. The barb wire fence wouldn't even bother me, if I had a cool gate.

This page prooves another thing, that I am a true packrat. I've had that little photo of a crazy quilt rooster since 1989 when I got a catalog with it in it. I kept the whole catalog because of that little rooster until a couple of years ago when I finally tore it out. Now after all those years it has a home in my journal.

Sometimes I'm not particularly ready to work with one of the vintage pages in my journal. I think this one was an example. I found the scissors and words on an old pattern tissue that had some ads on it. I recently ran across a crazyquilter online who actually finished a quilt project that I also embarked on, but quickly fizzled - a Y2K quilt that was to have 2,000 pieces. 200 blocks with 10 pieces in each block, all of them different. I had a couple of swaps to get different fabrics. I think I finished about 10 blocks and traded for a few more. Then I got distracted by paper arts and never went back to it. I had forgotten the project until I saw the finished quilt online. She said that she gave up on the numbers, but still has a very pretty finished quilt. The seam stitch drawings and words on this page I think came about as a result of this. I'd like to do some crazyquilting some time soon. I just don't seem to pick it up and get started. I'd like ot make a cover for my current journal like I planned back in January when I started it. Maybe if my sewing/craft room weren't such a mess...

The bird on the right page was inspired by this cool page . I messed up the wing. I thought I would go up and paint over the part that was too long, but I decided to just leave it.

My sweet Madelyn has decided that she likes to draw in my journal. I was showing it to her mom on Monday and she wanted to find a white page. We were asking her who that was that she drew and she said, "It's me!" and threw out her arms, fingers spread wide and threw her head back and got a wide smile on her face. Her mom said that she has a set of antennae that she wears with her tutu and fairy wings. She also added the rows of stamping with her Dora stamp.

The Sarasa packaging is from a new pen set that I got at Staples on Monday. I really like them. I've used Sarasas before and they really last for me, plus they have a nice size line. I just wish I could find one in olive green to replace the one that I used all the ink out of. It was a favorite for months.

I also picked up a vinyl covered composition book to make my next journal out of. One of my students had one in black and I really liked the feel of it. I found this one at Wal-mart. I used it to make my Volume Eight journal from. I deconstructed it and a quad rule compo book sent to me by an online friend and put it back together with aboug half quad-rule pages and half vintage pages from old books Thursday night. One more page in the current journal and I'll be ready to start this one. I laced some bright threads through the stitching on the spine to liven it up some. I don't know if I'll add to the cover or leave it like it is.

A few in between pages

Sometimes I just want to write in my journal. Pages like this one fill the bill. The pink in the speech bubble is paper that I took off our new windows.

My niece spent the weekend with us and was working on her scrapbook that she will leave here and work on when she comes over. I don't like to put the girls' faces up on the interenet, thus the leaf. She drew the fox and rainbow that I included on this page.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on these in between pages and I thought of these baby photos of my husband and myself. These are photocopies of the originals.

I did the pages in the last three photos in one setting. I have a tendency to treat spreads with the smaller pages in between as one spread.

Volume Seven of my journal is nearly filled. I'm contemplating what I want to use next. I had almost decided to just use a quad-rule composition book that a friend sent me, but I'm starting to think that I would miss the vintage pages if I do that. Maybe I will re-bind a new book using the quad pages, regular pages, and vintage pages with some brown paper feed sack pages thrown in. I'm hoping I can find one of those cool embossed looking black notebooks I've been seeing at school for the cover.

Someone Witchy

I've been in the mood to sketch dolls lately I guess. Last night I spotted this adorable witch on Ulla's blog and the next thing I knew I had my pen and a sheet of printer paper out and in action. The journaling is all about my October 28 birthday and how I used to have Halloween birthday parties. Seeing the dolls dressed up on Ulla's blog has inspired me to put mine in costume for the holiday. I'm hoping to start this week and dress as many as I can find costumes for. It's been a while since I've had them all out on display.

I was tickled when I saw the new GPP Streat Team Crusade. At first I thought, "Goth, I'll never have anything for that." Then I read a bit farther and realized that Michelle was talking about Halloween decorations. I just finished a page last night and hadn't even glued the witch down yet. I get to be one of the first to post. Our leaves here in Arkansas haven't fallen yet as it looks in the journal picture. There were some branches down in the back yard that we had to cut when the new roof went on. I thought they would be a good backdrop for the Halloween page.

The checkerboard on the background was stamped with a piece of foam that I pulled off one of our new windows. Each window had two of these foam pieces glued on to keep them from bumping into each other during shipping, I guess. I immediately thought of stamping with them when I saw them. We have eight of the nine windows in the new part of the house put in. Siding is next, probably some weather-proof insulation board first. These windows are in the bedroom-to-be. Unless it gets changed into a new living room. We are loving the four big windows (3' x 6')and talking about changing our plan.

Numbers...I have them tonight

I was thinking last night about Dawn Sokol's book, 1,000 Journal Pages, that she is working on, and it occurred to me that I might be reaching around that number of individual pages myself soon. I counted them tonight and I've passed it! 1,024 pages to be exact. I'm a bit impressed with myself. That is just pages since I started painting my compo book spreads. There are a lot more with just writing, and writing with some visual stuff glued in. Lots of memories stored in those books.

Just now when I went to log in here, I discovered that this is my 601st blog entry. Another big number. I guess if nothing else, the numbers prove that I'm persistant. Not very timely maybe. I'm playing catch-up again. But I do seem to be persistant.


You know you're a journaler when you find a dead frog in the washing machine and the first thing you do is put it on the scanner to include in your journal. After the scan was on the page, I realized that I had labeled the back and front incorrectly. Oh well, I'm not a scientist.

I found this mosaic that my son made in high school a couple of weeks ago. This is a scan. I'm wanting to frame the original. For now it's displayed on my bookshelf.

The flowers on this page are made from shaped erasers that I carved the center out of. The stem and leaves are more eraser stamps. I think they turned out pretty cute. Definately have potential to use somewhere else.

I added some to this page, but I'm too tired to take another photo. So far the curtains haven't gotten made. I hope it doesn't take me two years like it did from the time I bought fabric for my kitchen curtains and journaled about it. I still haven't made the chair slipcovers that I planned.


I have more pages to post, but I'll save them for another post. My dial-up is working even slower than normal tonight. On to my second thousand pages.