Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Changing it up a little...

Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well on this fine Tuesday! I've changed things up a little with my No More Excuses process, and I want to share the changes with you...

The first of October, my plan was to go from doing a collage page a day, to making a whole week fit onto two pages. The reason being that I wanted these mini-collages to be a warmup for my actual art journal work. What actually happened was I was taking so much time with the "warmup" collages, that my poor art journal was just sitting there, neglected. (Poor thing.)

So, anyhoo, I got the whole rest of 2011 all mapped out in my NME journal, ready for my mini collages, and guess what? The first one I did (on Oct 1), I realized I did NOT like doing them this way! HA. Since I had already made up the whole book, I thought - I'll try it for a week and see how I feel. On Oct 2, I was SURE I didn't like doing it this way! It felt cramped using this tiny space. Here's how the first two pages turned out...
So that was that. The tiny collages were not gonna happen. Trying things is how you learn I guess, right? In any case, it brought me to my new way of journaling, which I am LOVING, so it's all good!

I am just doing daily entries right in my art journal! DUH. Why didn't I think of that before??? I love it!

I taped an October divider page right into my journal (on the right)...


and then I taped my page of unsuccessful journaling on the back (left side), cuz I don't believe in throwing things away. Then I started with the next page that was already in the journal (right side)...

It was SO MUCH FUN!!!

Now, that may be way more info than you need - lol. But, I know some of you have been asking how I make decisions and what my process is like. I want you to know that I change my mind ALOT, and I consider that to all be part of what makes it fun!

Now, I know I'm doing it the right way for me, because I can't wait to do today's entry! Yeayyy! The different size and shaped pages are going to be a great challenge! I will keep you posted on how it goes.

I think I am going to try Project Life in 2012! Have you seen the new designs? They are so awesome! More on that later.

I hope you are having a fabulous week my friends! Thanks for visiting!

6 comments:

dawn said...

I like your little mini pages as much as the bigger ones. I understand about the difference in sizes though and making it all fit. Scrapbooking is like that for me too.

How cute these came out though and I am glad you could make it work out for you.

Thanks so much for sharing your thought process, it's nice to know that even you have to change your ideas in the middle of a project.

I have been doing Project Life for 3 years now and this year has been my favorite. Instead of doing it daily mine is more a weekly album. It's a lot more freeing and unstressfull. this way. I've also started adding extra page protectors on some weeks to hold the kids artwork/special papers. Just remember it can be anything you want it too be, no right/wrong way. I post my new PL pictures every week if you want to check mine out. I will be posting later today on my last week ones. The designs are beautiful and I'm thinking of actually getting 2 of them and mingle them.
Thanks for sharing!

Marit said...

It's so much fun and educational to learn how you handle your art journal and how you make decisions (and change them.. ha!) I know the feeling of starting a 'way of working' and it turns out to feel bad when you are actually doing it that way... I, for instance, found out I don't like square pages anymore.. but I am determined to finish my (square!) 'A Year in the Life of an Art Journal' book... next year will definitely be another shape though!!! Yes, we learn the most from our 'mistakes' and 'tries'

Michelle LaPoint Rydell said...

Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments Dawn and Marit! That makes my day! Dawn, I love your idea about mixing two different project life designs! I just might do that too - I've been agonizing over which one of the new ones to buy - why not buy both? Thanks for the inspiration - Love it!

Kelly said...

These pages for October are fabulous. I like that you have captured only a few days on each page and you concentrate on specific things for those days. They are really cute.
Hugs and blessings
Kelly

Trece said...

Michelle, I know you got your NME journal from Papaya, but is it a spiral journal, or a diary/calendar? I am going to start NME and want to know what kind of calndar/journal/diary I should look for. Thanks for the help!
trecewrites at yahoo dot com.

Michelle LaPoint Rydell said...

Hi Trece! The ones I was using are the spiral bound notebooks at papaya. Here's a link:
https://www.papayaart.com/category/SPNB/Spiral-Notebooks/1.html

Have fun with the class!