Quick journal pages

Some days I don't have any time to sit and take two hours art journaling. Some days I only have ten minutes. When that happens I use this quick exercise to get my thoughts on the page and express myself artistically. I used a 6B pencil to write as fast as possible what I was thinking about and then I used my watercolor crayons to draw an image over the top and then painted over the crayon with a water brush. It is not meant to look perfect just to express myself in the time I had.

This page I just glued down all the stuff I picked up on my birthday. I really love pages that show my days. No one else has a page like this because they didn't do those exact things on that day, at least I don't think another art journaler was stalking me :) And if you take your journal with you and a glue stick, you can stick them down as you go.

Sing a new song

As I was journaling this morning I realized something about myself. It is something I have known for a while but it keeps popping up and I act surprised every time. As I was thinking about Fall, since next Wednesday will be September 1st, I was looking forward to getting on a schedule. I always feel this way by the end of August. It is like eating too much rich food, it is fun for a short time but eventually eating regular meals becomes much more appealing. So after a summer of lazy days, I long for structure and a schedule. The problem I am having this year is that the whole year has been like summer. A lot of uncertainty and unknowns. Waiting for a door to open or a clue as to where I should be devoting my time. Since my whole being relaxes with a schedule and focused certainty I am finding this year to be very stressful over nothing. I keep telling myself to take a chill pill and enjoy this time of rest and trust that God has it all handled. Too many years of running around like a crazy person from one crisis to another makes waiting just as challenging. Haven't we all heard to not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself. The actual practice of that is a lot more challenging than you think. But I was reading in Psalm 94-96 today and was struck by something.

Psalm 94:19

When doubts filled my mind,

Your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.

Psalm 95:6-7

Come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the LORD our maker,

for He is our God

We are the people He watches over,

the sheep under His care.

Oh, that you would listen to His voice today!

Psalm 96:1

Sing a new song to the Lord

Let the whole earth sing to the LORD!

He is there watching over me waiting for me to turn my focus on Him and give Him the glory He deserves. I need to sing a new song because the old one is ....old. He is giving me a focused certainty, it is Him. All the other stuff that I have been waiting for comes out of the focus on Him. I hear Him telling me that he does have it covered and to just focus on Him and sing.

So what song are you singing to the Lord?

Do you need to sing a new song?

Where has your focus been?

These are all good journaling prompts as we head into September and a new season.

I was away this weekend celebrating my birthday. It feels like I have been celebrating all week, life's hard,hehe. I woke up Saturday to find a Dick Blick giftcard by my phone and it was used up by the end of the day. What can I say, I have no will power when it comes to art supplies. Pitt brush tip pens, Golden fluid acrylics and Stonehenge paper called my name loudly. I was also very happy to be able to go to their store in Seattle and not have to get on-line. I have so much more to say but I am blogging from my phone while I wait for my internet to be fixed and so I will tell more when I get a full size keyboard.

50 Things - # 42

I had two lovely ladies come to my house the other day and we played in my art studio. I was able to teach art journaling to these eager students. I wish we would have had more time but I was able to steer them in the right direction and give them a good start. It was so fun that it got me thinking about having an open art journaling time at my home. Hmm, I will have to see where that idea takes me.

Just a test

I am trying out mobile blogging to see if I can blog from my phone.

Eat, Pray, Love

There were eight of us that went to happy hour at the local pub and then to the movies to see Eat, Pray, Love. We did eat, pray and loved the movie. It was a blast and the movie was a good one for a bunch of ladies to go to.

Imagine my surprise when I showed up at the restaurant and they all brought me birthday gifts.

I just love the idea of using a cute canvas bag as gift wrap. This one was from my niece and it makes me laugh.

I had such an amazing time.

Lots of smiling and laughter and treats with good friends.

You can't beat that!

Give-a-Way

My friend Michelle is having a give-a-way on her new sight. You can read about it here. And check out her new web-site here. I love her stuff and the winners will win big so check it out!

Make a Wish

I have been painting in my studio today. I guess I have birthdays on the brain. My daughters birthday was last week and mine is next week. I was trying out some new Golden fluid acrylic colors on this one and I really like how cheery it is. I am going to hang it up in my studio in anticipation of next week.

Discovery Bay

This past week we went on vacation to Discovery Bay. It is located in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. The weather was beautiful, the view was amazing and it was very quiet. After raising four kids, my husband and I really enjoy quiet vacations. This is the view from our deck. I sat out there to read and enjoy the view. We did a little site seeing while we were there also.

One of the places we went was Friday Harbor. It was cute little town were we enjoyed a nice lunch and ice cream as we walked around the town.

One of the first things we did was to take a whale watching boat trip. It was foggy in the morning and we only saw some fins above the water. But by the afternoon we saw this guy and he put on a show for us. There were five others with him but they kept themselves pretty far away from our boat.

I have never seen whales before except at Seaworld so it was very exciting.

When you tour around the Puget Sound at some point you will use a ferry boat. We took quite a few during our stay. Heading home one night we saw the most beautiful sunset. It was a lovely ending to a day that started with the Victoria, BC customs officers searching our car for 40 minutes convinced that we had weapons on board. They had us backed up against the fence and even had us raise our shirts to make sure we weren't hiding any weapons there. It was rather alarming but in the end they let us go with stern looks. Good thing I had taken out my art journal supplies or they might have been suspicious of my sharp scissors.

Our last ferry ride was from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. I just love the Seattle skyline with the Space needle standing so tall.

Our reason for going to Seattle was to visit some friends. While we were there, I got to see the rooftop garden. This hummingbird sat so still for me to snap a few shots.

I have a few journal pages that I created while I was gone using scraps and bits of things from my days.