Project Life - Week of March 19 - 25, 2012: Keeping it Simple...

I've seen a lot of people around the web posting that they are falling behind on their Project Life. Some are even quitting. I feel your pain. This project does get to be pretty darn time consuming, especially if you have other projects you are also trying to do. This past week I fell behind too, and so, in trying to catch up, I kept it simple. Hardly any embellishing. Just photos and patterned paper. I must say I still love how it turned out!

Here's the full spread. I used my Cocoa Daisy "By The Numbers Kit for the base this week...


Left side...
I have discovered that it's quicker for me to have one card where I highlight the events of the week, rather than embellishing each photo with detailed info.


And here's the right side...
The middle right image is one of my favorites from Maxfield Parrish, who is listed as my favorite artist on the card right next to it on the left. We visited daughter Becca and her boyfriend Chad on Saturday and I forgot to take a pic (doh!); so I just used a pic of them from awhile ago.

I saved a lot of time this week, and now I am keyed up for this week!

Scrapbook Soup Interview...

I'm so excited to be interviewed today on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog! It's part of her Scrapbook Soup TV series that has been going on this week. Check it out here!

Almost Done With My Record Album Art Journal...

I've got a little journal update for you today. I've only got two or possibly three more entries before this journal is full. I love that.

Here are some pages from March 23 - 25th...




I hope you are having an awesome week! Thanks for visiting!

Inspiration from my Nothing Book...

Would I sound old if I said I was around when the very first blank book came out? HA. Depending on your age, you may or may not remember "The Nothing Book." It came out in the 70's and seemed very innovative at the time. It was just a bound book with blank pages. I had one and I guess you could say it was my very first art journal.

Here it is. I love the clever title...


I only finished two spreads in this journal um nothing book. Here's the first one...

On the left page is a memorial to Brian Jones, who was a member of the Rolling Stones that died in 1969. The quote is from his headstone.

On the right page is a list of all of my favorites with a date of October 18, 1976. It's so fun to look at now. What's even more fun is that I did an updated list six years later and put it on the next spread...

This one is dated September 18, 1982...
Fun to see the changes. On the left side is a poem with a little drawing.

Anyways, the reason I bring it up, is that I was reminded of these favorites lists when I was working on the current prompt of "A Year In The Life of an Art Journal," and I decided to pull them out and use them as inspiration for an updated list - this time (gasp) 30 years later! Here's the prompt and my list...

THE PROMPT: These are a Few of My Favorite Things
THE STUFF: List of your favorite things. ie: fave color, book, coffee creamer, drink, season, flowers... etc.
THE TECHNIQUE: Brown paper ie: "brown paper packages tied up with string" and labels from some of your favorite things

I didn't use the brown paper, but here it is...

I used an 8 1/2 x 11" piece of white cardstock and a Sakura Glaze Pen in black. The coloring was done with sharpies. I'm going to tape it into my record album journal. I pasted copies of the old lists on the back side just for fun!

If you want to play along, head on over to the Year In the Life blog by clicking here...

Thanks for visiting and I will see you again soon!

Art Journal Catch Up...

I'm getting so excited because my Vintage Record Album journal is almost full! I don't know why that makes me giddy but it does! Here's a little update...

March 9th was when my Cocoa Daisy kit arrived. I had a narrow page in my journal that day, so I took the brown paper bag that my kit came in, and sewed it on to the right side. Ta-Da! A pocket for more journaling. Here's how the pages for March 9th and 10th turned out...
It's mostly just different shades of pink and orange acrylic paint on top of scrapbook paper/brown paper bag; plus bits of scraps and two magazine images.

Here's where I hid the journaling for March 9th...


Here's March 19th.
The left side background is all tissue paper, the right side is a page from a photography book.


And here's today's page. Totally random mix of vintage magazine pages, maps, scrapbook paper, etc...

If you want to see all of the pages of this journal so far, click here.

Thanks so much for visiting! Peace to you my friends!

Another Week of Project Life: March 12-18, 2012...

My process for doing project life is still evolving as I go and I am still LOVING it! More and more actually! Here's an overview of last week....
I did not cut background papers in advance this time, and I must admit it made it harder to put the puzzle together in the end.


Closeup of left side: A new little squirrel visiting our yard, a thrift store shoe score, and happy mail from a swap are among the highlights...
I love that my swap partner Jennifer, just happened to write me a note on a 3x4 sheet of paper! It went right in my project life - yeayyy!!! Thanks Jennifer!


Closeup of right side: The cats are starting to shed an enormous amount of fur since the weather has changed, so I wound some of Johnny's and Willie's together and included it on the page. I also included a photo of my mom because it was her birthday on Saturday. I still miss her so much. Doesn't she look beautiful?
My favorite part of this week is the photo for Sunday! Michael works in a very urban area and he came out of work Sunday afternoon to find TWO TURKEYS standing in the parking lot. Luckily he had his iphone and took a photo. He walks in the door and says to me - you have to see my two new little buddies. HA. How funny! You can hardly see them in the picture, so I also blew them up a little, cut them out and pasted them onto the inspirational postcard to the left. They are greeting the girl in the field of flowers. LOL.


I discovered a new way to work on my week as I go, and I am loving it. I have two stacks of plastic scrapbook supply containers, and the lids are just the right size to layout a weeks worth of papers. No more struggling with the page protectors during the week. I just pick up a day at a time and complete it. Here's how this week looks so far...
I'm thinking it might be a better way to take a photo when the week is complete too. I could avoid the glare of the page protectors that way!

I hope your week is going well! Thanks for visiting and for your comments! I really appreciate them!

Pearl Jam gets Spiritual at Scrapping The Music...

This week's song at Scrapping the Music is "Just Breathe" by one of my all-time favorite bands - "Pearl Jam." I loved this song from the first time I heard it.

This is a page from my vintage record-album journal. It fits inside one of the record sleeves...
"Just Breathe" inspires me to think about all of the little things I'm grateful for in my life. My husband Michael took this photo out of a plane window on one of our trips. I'm always mesmerized by our ability to fly over the clouds like that. It's just one example of the amazing beauty all around us.

The background is done with red maya mist sprayed through the hole in the record sleeve, collaged tissue paper layers, neocolor II crayons and a china marker.

Come on over and play along with us - we'd love to have you! Click here to go to the challenge, hear the song and see what the other design team members created!

The Second Floor Challenge & A Year In The Life of an Art Journal...

Julie and Nat have issued their first "Second Floor" challenge, and I'm excited to play along! The challenges are meant to have you stretch your artistic legs a little and try things that may be out of your comfort zone. The focus is on the process, making mistakes and learning along the way.

This first challenge is to use gold paint. This was a good one for me because I'm not one to go for metallic anything (usually). Well, I had this art journal page already started; so I thought I'd try using some gold paint on it.

My first idea was to smear a soft layer of gold over the blue/green background, and then wipe most of it off. That looked pretty good, but I wanted to take it a step further. I decided to try the technique where you blob some watery paint on the page and then blow through a straw to create an interesting effect. Umm, yeah...

First of all I didn't have a straw, so I tried blowing through a pen cover. Didn't work so well, and quite frankly I felt like the paint ended up looking like some sort of bodily fluid spill. Yuck. What to do...?

The next thing I tried was wadding up some waxed paper and blotting it around a little...
When I did that, the shimmer of the gold started to show up and it emphasized the texture of the paint - I really liked it! Yeayyy!

There was still some paint left in the cup, so I poured it onto a different page, and stamped it around with the top and bottom edges of the paper cup...

Again, ewwww yucky! So...

not to be dismayed, I decided to spray a favorite bright colored ink (Mr. Huey Plum Thumb), and some water, and I ended up with this...

It shimmers and glows and I LOVE it! It is the start of another journal page to be finished somewhere down the road!

Can't say I am now a gold paint fanatic, but I'm really glad I tried it, and I like what I ended up with. Thanks for the inspiration Julie and Nat! Can't wait to find out what the next challenge is! To find out more about the Second Floor Challenges, click here.

I ended up using the first journal page I showed you to complete the following "Year In The Life of an Art Journal" prompt:

THE PROMPT: Childhood memories
(it can be something from your own childhood or from your kids, a memory, a thought...)
THE STUFF: Glimmer mists & paint (time to get messy!)
THE TECHNIQUE: silhouettes (can be black, patterned paper, anything goes as long as it's a silhouette)

I used two of the three prompts to create this final page...


The large abstract flower in the background was done by tracing Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's fragmented flower stencil with a black, then a white marker.

Find out more about the "Year In The Life of an Art Journal" prompts here.

Thanks for visiting! I will see you again soon!

Cleaning Up and Cocoa Daisy Card Sketch Cards...

I'm in the midst of a huge clean-up project in my scraproom. It has turned into a dumping grounds - eeeek! Here's a little peek at what it looks like right now...

All surfaces are covered with stuff, which makes it impossible for me to create anything...

Before I do anything else, I must get it cleaned up!!!

In the meantime tho, I wanted to share the cards I made during the Cocoa Daisy Card Sketch Blog hop last week. I used the new Cocoa Daisy kit "Pier 39" for all of these. It was so much fun! I only got four done, but here they are...

This one is inspired by Emily's sketch...


This one by Ronda's sketch...

This one was inspired by Mandy's sketch...


and finally, this one was inspired by Vicki's sketch...

I think I will print out the rest of the sketches and bring them with to my next crop! I loved limiting myself to one kit, and seeing what I could come up with.

Okay, now I'm off to get the scraproom cleaned up! Wish me luck - aargh!

Stevie Nicks at Scrapping The Music...

The new song at Scrapping the Music is "Leather and Lace" by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley. I've always loved this song, and it was super fun to see all the different ways the design team scrapped it for the challenge!

I ended up doing this journal page...
This lyric makes me think of the spiritual questions I have had over the last year, and it was the perfect chance to write about them. I covered the journaling with translucent paint, and then built my page up from there. My fave thing was using tissue paper to fill in the painted circles.

Come on over and play along! We would love to have you! Click here to go to the challenge.

I also want to mention how excited I am to see the new challenge that Nat Kalbach and Julie Fei-Fan Balzer have created. It's called "The 2nd Floor Challenge," and it's about challenging yourself to step outside your comfort zone creatively, and not care if you flop big time! HA. Just to enjoy the process. I NEED THIS RIGHT NOW. I've been feeling sort of in a rut creatively, and this will be a great chance to try some new things! The first challenge goes up sometime today! Check it out here. I've also got a widget in my sidebar that will stay there, so you can click there too.

I hope you are enjoying your week so far! I am finishing up last week's Project Life so I should be able to post that tomorrow.

One Little Word - January Prompts

I've been working some more on my One Little Word Album. This week I finished the prompts for January, which included coming up with some words and images that fit with my word - "Peace."

Here's how my two pages turned out...
The peace sign is cut from the patterned paper, so that the background shows through. Then the middle pieces were glued back on. The bottom right is watercolors and spray ink on watercolor paper, topped with a dictionary definition.


For the right side, I took a couple of magazine images that evoked my word to me...

What I love about this project is that it is keeping me connected to my word. For February and March, we are to gather images and take actions, so I will be doing them both at the same time to catch up. I am looking forward to sharing the results with you!

Did you know Cocoa Daisy is having a blog hop party?! They've redesigned their site and to celebrate they are having giveaways at each blog on the hop. Each stop also has a card sketch, which I have been having a lot of fun with. I'm in need of cards, so I am going to see how many I can complete. Click here to go to the start of the hop.

Thanks for visiting and I will see you again soon!

Journal Update...

I've got more journal pages to share with you today. I am loving the experimental and interactive nature of this journal! It feels so free...

Here's the overview of Sunday, March 4th...

The left side is a combination of vintage wallpaper, antique ephemera, a fancy napkin (the bird eggs), and some new packing tape that I just love...


On the right side, I used a 6 x 6 scrapbook page that was a make and take at last weekend's crop at Archiver's. It's the pink square with the clouds. Instead of adding photos, I turned it into part of my page and taped it in as a flap...
that flips up to reveal more journaling...

Here's Wednesday, March 7...


Just to give you a comparison, here's how this page looked before I completed it. You can see the stitching down the middle cuz it's the middle page of the signature; and both the left and right side were very narrow. It was piece of a page from a coffee table book. The left was a description of the photo that is on the right (of the sheep)...

You can see the original left side of the page to the right of the unicorn; and I taped on the blue, and the red/yellow patterned papers, to make the page wider. I was also giddy to find an old piece of ledger paper with the word Wednesday at the top! (I'm easily pleased - ha).The illustration is from the book Unicorn Dreams that I got at a thrift store.

On this one, I added the pink vintage wallpaper and blue cardstock to make the page wider...


Here's March 8th. On this one I decided to leave the right side narrow, and instead just added a postcard (the beetle) to allow for extra journaling...




The photo is of my beloved grandparents on my mom's side. I recently came across it, and I love it so much!

The postcard flips open for more journaling room...

On another note, Scrapping The Music has some fun changes coming up! The design team and I are working on them now, and they will be revealed on April 1st, so stay tuned for that!

That's it for now. I hope you are having a super fun weekend! Thanks so much for visiting, and let me know if you have any questions about the journal pages. Sometimes they are hard to explain. I'm happy to answer as best as I can!

Project Life - Week of February 27 - March 4, 2012...

This week I tried another new thing with my Project Life spread. I decided to use a scrapbook kit to coordinate it all together. The kit I chose is the new one from Noel Mignon - Homespun (sorry it's sold out). I really love the turquoise and gold colors of this kit and it fit my mood for the week! It really was a lot of fun to do it this way!

Here's how it turned out...

Closeup of left side...
I received the kit on Monday, so it seemed appropriate to include a picture of it! Other things to note include the butterfly, which was part of my valentine bouquet from Michael. I finally had to toss it this week, but it was cool to be able to have a place to keep the beautiful butterfly, that was nestled in among the flowers. He is made of paper, but doesn't he look real? The March calendar is a free printable from Owl Barn.

Right side closeup...
I was a big fan of Davy Jones as a kid. He was my first crush! I had to pay tribute to him here. Photo is from the internet. The deer photo is from a Vermont magazine website. The bottom right photo is tons of weather symbols that I stamped, cut or otherwise prepared for using in my daily journal.

With each week I think I enjoy doing Project Life even more!

Thanks so much for visiting!!!

What I Am by Will.I.Am at STM...

If you have not heard the song that Will.I.Am did for Sesame Street - you've got to check it out! I don't have any small children, but I happened upon it on youtube.com and I fell in love with it instantly!!! It's the song of the week at Scrapping The Music!

Here's the art journal page I created for the challenge...
There are so many good lines in this song, it was hard to choose what I wanted to do! In the end, I decided I wanted to do a playful page that expresses who I am, and my art journal seemed like the best place to do that! I played around with my favorite colors and patterns, and used gesso to include my own handprints. This was a lot of fun!

Come on over and check out the challenge! We'd love to have you play along with us!!!