Start the Day
The day was greeted by our eastern most campers with coffee and huge appreciation for our glorious Colorado sunrise. Today is Watercolor Class and everyone succeeded in painting beautiful watercolor pieces – many hadn’t done it before!
you too can watercolor!
Don't wear out the paper!
Could we do this at school?
Watercolor takes more mental input that most people realize And after working intently all day, it was definitely time for a break. Thus Margarita Night!
Relaxing before our Mexican dinner
I'm not sure - does this go in Watercolor Class or Margarita Night?
Posted in: Adventure Art, Art Camp for Women, Classes.
Everyone arrived safe and sound at Art Camp this afternoon in Boulder, Colorado. Our weather co-operated with a dramatic thunderstorm when it threatened to become too warm. The women dumped their bags and set about meeting their fellow campers and making themselves at home.
Jumping In
A Rose is a Rose
Some art, some conversation, wine and cheese helped welcome the campers. When the Thunder Gods finished, we had a delicious dinner on the patio, went for a walk, had dessert and then talked until bed.
Wine and Cheese anyone?
Posted in: Adventure Art, Art Camp for Women, Classes.
Time to Go!
I am so excited – you could almost call it scared! LOL We have women from all over the country coming to mini-camp and boy, are we going to have fun! In the meantime, my studio is stripped bare and the goodies are stacked in the driveway waiting to be loaded up. My intention is to blog directly from camp, but connections, firewalls and passwords may interfere with that. Stay tuned!
Of course it will fit
Posted in: Adventure Art, Art Camp for Women, Classes, keepanartjournal.
We had our third Art Journaling Club meeting Friday night. All of our members are women that work hard at demanding and diverse callings in addition to managing a homelife better than most.
Art Journaling Club
Two of us currently live at the clubhouse so we had an advantage, but all of us began the evening pretty worn out from the week. So after a sluggish beginning to what was supposed to be fun – we had a pow wow, took a collection and sent out for some beer. Just the thought of the beer revived us somewhat and even before delivery the art journaling was going much better.
Paint, popcorn, glue and beer - what more do you want?
We came to the conclusion that it is not easy to shift from one side of the brain to the other without practice. AND that making that shift is more rejuvenating than a week-long vacation.
It is not easy to add a new commitment to an already full calendar, but we came away from our evening of art and connection, refreshed and revived. We will persevere and make meeting and making art together a priority and we will do what it takes to enjoy ourselves fully.
Hot night, cold beer and art with friends - what's not to love?
Posted in: Art Journaling Club, art journaling.
Moving right along in the process the next You Tube video Teesha Moore Journaling Part 2 of 4 continues demonstrating Teesha’s technique with bordering the pages and begins to add focal collage images – now the fun really begins.
Front Cover - Adding collage elements inside the borders.
When I got to this part I worried that it would feel kind of like an assembly line, but as I sorted through my envelopes of images (do you remember that I am doing this in the front seat of the car?) I found myself choosing a head for this page and a pair of shoes for that page. The perfect legs for that body and a new smile for that head. It was fun and the kids in the backseat would often poke a head into the front seat and kibbitz.
The picture above is the front cover in progress. The border consists of my favorite things, coffee, chocolate, flowers, pillows and good books. So it is only logical that the golden, sybaritic Egyptian Queen be the center piece. In this photo, I am only as far as gluing in the elements, there is no attempt to alter the images or blend them into the picture. That will happen in a future video – how do I know? I peeked!
Wonderful Feet!
The Perfect Body - and those legs!
This really was the most fun yet! The kids and I giggled, cutout and glued as the car forged through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and into Washington.
The pages got wilder than the wild west as the miles went by and the coffee went down, by the time we got to the turn around point we realized there would be NO turning back.
The Blue 3-Page Spread
For non-video instructions on this method of journaling or just for more background immersion use this link.
Posted in: Adventure Art, Art Journaling Club, altered journals, art journaling, journaling, keepanartjournal.
Step 3 - borders stamped and collaged
The next step in the process, after making the journal and painting the pages is adding borders to the pages. The Youtube video titles are a little random but
Teesha Moore Journaling Collage Part 1 of 4 is the right video for this next step.
I decided to work on this journal on a long road trip and to do the collage when it wasn’t my turn to drive. So I spent a little time before the trip cutting out various patterned papers and magazine pages in strips for making borders. I also stamped some of my hand made stamps onto paper and cut them up for border material. I took 3 envelopes of collage items with me, one of the envelopes was for border patterns. I also picked up brochures and a few magazines as the trip wore on and I tired of the sparse pickings in the envelopes.
Sideways - straight border, weight on page for picture
As we traveled through the day I was unable to check via computer to see if I was doing it right and my mind went nuts telling me I was doing it all wrong and I would never learn a new method by doing it ‘my’ same old way. But by the time I had done one or two rectangular borders, I was tired of that and the borders began to blossom! On some pages I will be hard put to find room for the central figure let alone the scripting.
Borders are branching out!
Posted in: Adventure Art, Art Journaling Club, art journaling, keepanartjournal.
One thing that I know about myself – if I am not pushing myself forward, I am sliding backwards. I decided to try again to use online sources and teach myself. I also know that I am not one to hold myself to account and can easily tell myself that “it doesn’t matter” if it is something just for me. So I invited several women to join me in starting an Art Journaling Club and four of them accepted! We have started, but the summer and excessively full schedules have made for a bumpy beginning.
There are two online journaling resources that we decided to test out – all of us starting with Teesha Moore’s Amazing 16-page Journal so we would actually have a fresh new journal to work with. Teesha generously demonstrates her entire journaling process on YouTube videos and if you follow the link above you will be able see all of them listed to the side of the Youtube page.
Amazing 16-page Journal ala Teesha Moore
Some of us will go ahead and work our way through the Teesha Moore videos to learn her techniques. Once absorbed, the techniques will become part of our own journaling process, at least that is the hope. LOL.
The club met twice – those little words sound so simple – major effort to get together and for me to have a studio that I was willing to have people see. I am fairly organized, but in the middle of a project, my studio devolves to chaos. Thinking about 6 women in the same creating frenzy as mine scared me a bit.
The mess of one!
This picture was taken after working on the Teesha journal for a day, then cleaning up before bed. Cleaning up means, lids on glue and liquids, images sorted and pictures taken. I do clean it down to the surface at least weekly…I digress.
We got our blank journals made in the first session and we started painting them the second session and then we missed having a session in July and haven’t got one scheduled for August – we may postpone for cold weather…again LOL. I realized that 1. I was waiting for the meetings to do anything in the journal and 2. I was sliding back…So I gave myself a little pep talk and turned on the next section of Teesha Moore in Youtube. Stay tuned for progress reports!
Posted in: Art Journaling Club, Classes, art journaling, keepanartjournal.
Just to sort out what to do and what to eat and what exactly makes us happy, g-daughter and I made a little word cloud. To make your own go to wordle.net and click on create…enjoy
Posted in: Adventure Art, Cool Products.
The last four pieces I made for the challenge were something I have been thinking of doing for over a year. We recently re-tiled our kitchen counters, adding a splash protection of tile up the wall. Once the tiles were up, grouted and dry we discovered to our dismay that the switchplate covers did not fit!
Not finished
The kitchen remodel included updating the electrical to code so that left 11 switches and sockets and their covers at eye level in the kitchen. 6 of them in the border of the tile. God bless my husband’s patience. After 3 months of stewing (the tile was beautiful and the ugly socket holes just that UGLY) I came up with the idea of using old mouse pads, carving them up and painting them. After experimenting I ended up with craft foam from the big M. I made two covers and then there were holidays and adventures and I dropped the project.
Still damp
The first two covers I made were free hand and every thing that could go wrong, did go wrong, so I knew I had to come up with a different way of making them or live with ugly holes in the wall.
While cogitating on what small items I could make for this challenge I thought of the switchplate covers early on, but shied away from the frustrating task. Then in an epiphany I thought of making them using my art journaling techniques, specifically rubber stamps. I rummaged among my stamps and couldn’t come up with anything that would work in the kitchen. So as per the last post I made my own.
Today I will install the plates, scrub them down and enjoy the fun and not-quite perfect addition to my kitchen.
Switchplate with recipe
Small switchplate
Posted in: art journaling, keepanartjournal.
