New Love

I have a new addiction….stencils!!  I always seem to be a bit behind the curve.  They are certainly not new, and many artists have been using them forever.  It seems that there are so many really pretty designs out there now.  I just ordered six from Stencil Girls.  

And…then I found Tim Holtz' stencils which I think are the perfect size for journaling.  You can find them on Amazon.  You can find his entire line at Scrapbook dot com.

I had a few of my own and played in my journal this week.

At the same time I'm working in my tiny journal I call "Bits and Pieces".  I started this journal several years ago and it's mainly for paper collage of bits and pieces.  

It's a small but fat sample book from Marco's Papers. I guess we can call it a repurposed book.  I plan to add stamps and stencils to paper collaged pages.  I covered front and back today 

using a photocopy of a collage I did in Traci Bautista's class.  As Traci says, "always leverage your art".  She photocopies everything and uses over and over.

Here's to a glorious 2014!

Winter Is Here

Winter has definitely arrived in Southern California.  You wouldn't know it though, as this past week has been in the low 70's.

I promise, however, that it has arrived even if in fits and starts.  My Ginkgo tree is showing its beautiful yellow colors and dropping them all.  I took these images a couple days ago.  Today I have the most beautiful carpet of yellow leaves around the base of the pot…..awesomely gorgeous….a work of art.

Hope your holiday, however you celebrate, was magnificent!

Journaling Everyday

As I mentioned in a previous post, my friend Jacki gave us each a brand new journal to work in when our art group had our monthly meeting. Then she gave us some very creative ideas including the credit card face in that post.

It started me thinking about how many journals I have started that are yet in an unfinished state.  That thought caused me to wonder about the projects we start and never finish.  On the positive side, I found these finished journals…...

I have more that are finished inside but I neglected to decorate the outer cover! So I'm not showing those to you.   Seems like that should be the easy part for an artist, right?  It does make me feel better that I can see a number of journals finished.  

I found these below in various states of completion.  Actually the journal on the bottom in the first image is the one Jacki gave me.  

So then I started to think, "Okay, which one should I work on?  Should I work in two or three at the same time?  Or….? 

I decided to just do something, anything to get my muse going.  Sometimes I think getting started is the hardest part.  It's not that the blank white page scares me.  It's just that I have gotten away from the daily journaling.   I got sidetracked a couple years ago with image editing, and I do love that with a passion.  But...

I do miss getting my hands dirty every now and then.  So why can't I do both?  There's a voice in my head saying something about scattered attention and not remaining focused on one thing to finish.  Where did that voice come from anyway?

Julie Fei_Fan Balzer says to spend even a few minutes a day journaling…..even if it's just to do a background.  If I could keep that discipline going, I could finish some of these babies.  And so, my friends, let's see if I can do it.