Grow and Sing Journal Pages

As I began adding collage bits to the pages I looked at other artists' journals and found myself thinking "How can I make my pages look like theirs - they are SO fabulous".   And I am really good technically so I probably could have duplicated or mimicked their work.  But then I thought "Wait!  This is MY art journal so why don't I use some smaller copies of the critters that I drew and have made into quilts?"  Mind boggling, don't you think?  Use my OWN stuff instead of trying to be like someone else.  Sheesh! 

Anyway - I did just that.  I made some copies of my own drawings and colored them in before adding them to the pages - this was a lot easier than trying to redraw them and get the colors light enough to show on the darker pages.

AND I really like the way that these pages are starting to look.  This first one has the word Grow and I think that my thoughts will center on how I want to grow - risks associated with growing - all that sort of thing.

This next page includes a bird on a fence and if you follow this blog you may recognize the critter as Alice Has Something to Say - or in this case perhaps Alice Has a Song to Sing!  Next to Alice is a pocket that I can stick various cards in.  That should be fun and will add a new dimension to the journal.  The music border on the far left is torn from an old book of Standards that I got from my Father-in-Law Roy.  He was a wonderful piano player and this places a tiny bit of him in my book.    Barbara

A Jar Full of Creativity, Some Flowers and Some Fish

Now remember as you look at these pages that they are In Progress and not even half finished.  The first steps require painting and adding collage bits to take away the scary Blank Page.  The paint that I use is just cheap old acrylic paint and I smear it on with old credit cards and with my fingers.  Very very fun.
I have a lot of weird photos that I have collected over the years and some great collage pages that I have purchased from various sources. This first page has a jar labeled Creativity and various stages of how I feel about creativity listed above.  The large pointer is attached so that it moves and can indicate various stages of creativity.  The next step is to add writing.

This page doesn't have a theme yet.  I like the combination of Zentangly flowers with cut out shapes for other flowers.  The crazy looking fish are from a collage sheet by Iktupilli.  She has great weird stuff on her site.  I made some dominoes for my daughter Anna with really weird spooky creatures.

Art Journals can be FUN instead of Torture! Really!

I have always and forever been impressed by the gorgeous art journals that are shown in magazines.  So I would buy a nice blank journal - and then sit and look at the blank pages and just about cry because I had no idea where to start.  Two things saved me:  Art Journaling - Pages in Stages (a Cloth Paper Scissors DVD featuring Dawn DeVries Sokol) and Teesha Moore's web site (her advice for making an art journal including directions for actually constructing and binding a journal).

 So even though these pages are only partially finished, I am going to share them with you.  After all what is the point of having a blog if there is nothing new to see when you visit? 
This is the outside of the journal.  I built it with book board covers so it will be sturdy and covered it with some really great paper.  It will have a title on the front and beads on the strings that you can see along the binding.  There are several signatures (a bunch of pages folded together) that are sewn into the Italian Book Cloth that acts as the binding holding it all together.  I used waxed polyester for the binding cord.  Barbara

AGES since I added to this lovely BLOG -

So here is what has been happening....I haven't posted lately because my life has been fluctuating so wildly that my Creativity has slumped to an all time LOW and I am just sort of flopping around.  Why?  Because I have MORE time on my hands - not less.   And I think that my entire soul is sort of reorienting itself to the new reality.  Which is a really good thing - but strange. 
For the past couple of years I have been very involved in an environmental effort - but sadly it was eating me alive and I had no energy left to work on what I really love which is my Art.  So I resigned from the environmental effort - and have more time.  You would think (at least I DID) that this would make me just blossom in 16 different directions creatively - but alas it has not.  Instead I feel at loose ends and don't really have a focus.
When I don't have a focus and am not creating art - I feel frustrated and less than happy.  So in order to break out of this slump - I did two different things - both of which I will post photos of on this blog.  Check out the next couple of entries to see what I am talking about.      Barbara

Woof!

I am still in a strange place creatively so I decided to make a quilt that is from one of my little drawings, but that will probably be donated to one of the local groups that takes care of abandoned dogs.
I am including the first photo of the quilt when it was just fused together and then another photo once the quilting was completed.  My husband Bob is an excellent person to give me constructive comments on my quilts.  When I showed him this little quilt before the quilting - he REALLY disliked it.  Didn't like the color of the dog, didn't like the tail having three ends, didn't like anything about it.  I take his comments quite seriously but figured that I probably knew what I was doing, and continued.  Worst case, I figured I could just throw it away if it turned out really bad.

And then I started quilting.  I decided to do the quilting around the figure with a heavy zigzag stitch so that the finished quilt would look sort of like I had drawn a picture with a marker and then colored it in.  And I think it looks pretty good.  And I think the three prongs on the tail make it look like either the tail is wagging or is sort of fuzzy.  What do you think?   Barbara

Free Motion Class Sample

I will be teaching a free motion quilt class in March at my Hill and Hollow quilt guild so I wanted to make a new class sample.  The circles and feathers are fused on using my hand dyed fabric.  The background is also my hand dyed fabric.  I used a small amount of metalic thread just to proove to the students that they can too.  The rest of the quilting is done with Rayon thread.  This is still my favorite part of the art quilting process so it gave me a lot of joy to do it. Jan

Hawaii Honeymoon

My wonderful grandson and his bride went to Hawaii on their honeymoon.  They tried to include the people they love by posting on Facebook as they enjoyed their experience.  As they were walking on the beach, Amanda took a picture of their shadows and posted it.  I thought that it was a heart warming image of where they were and the love that they share.  It just screamed to be a quilt for them.  When I printed the pix from Facebook it came out to be a little over 1".  I put it on Photoshop and enlarged it to 5"X7".  I traced it and used a program that I love,called RapidResizer, to print it to 18"X24".

I painted the background and fused the shadow onto the background.  It was embellished with real shells.  They should see it this weekend if the snow and ice allow a trip to see them.  From the beach to an ice-snow storm must be a real shock to the body.  Jan