Art Journal Challenge

Well, it is day three on the art journal challenge. I am loving this but we shall see what I say when we get to the last week. The only problem is that once I get out to my art room I loose all track of time. Hours fly by like it is only minutes. How is that possible? During one of my quiet times last week God gave me a poem. It is pretty long and so I am journaling a line of it each day and what it means to me. If you write down the lines each day, by the end you will have the poem. I never have a plan. I just start with color and go from there. This is really fun. You all should really try this. I can't wait until my paint pens come. I hear they will be here in a couple of days and I am waiting on pins and needles or should I say pens and needles. HA, HA!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

I have had a very nice Mother's day. My boys went together to buy me a dozen roses in my favorite color and I wish you could smell them because they are heavenly. They also got me a small pink teddy bear and ordered me those Sharpie poster paint pens that I have been going on and on about. They will be here in the mail hopefully this week. I am so excited to try them out. My daughter is going to take me out for lunch and a movie. It is very nostalgic for us both because we used to have alone time doing that together. My other daughter lives on the East coast and will call later. I know this because she emailed me to tell me she would. I am hoping for a nap and my husband and I are going to watch PS I Love You today. It doesn't get much better than that. The sun has even made an appearance. Motherhood is the hardest and yet the most rewarding job. Most of the time you wonder what you were thinking when you thought you could be a mother and then they do the nicest thing and you think it will be OK. Our pastor read a passage today about the struggle of birthing a child bring joy in the end. The struggles in life sure are hard but God uses it all to bring us joy if we are dependant on Him. Well, today I will focus on the joy and save the rest for another day. :) blessings to you all!

Art Journal Challenge

I am realizing that I need to post my first day of art challenge but I may wait until tomorrow to post today's page. Then if I have to do any of my pages at night I will always be a day behind so it won't matter. Any one going to join me?

Confessions of a Daily Journaler

Traci Bunkers was the teacher in this class and she is also a published artist. Her journals are all very random with intense colors and topics. She kept yelling at us to just slap stuff down although she used another 's' word in place of stuff. I think the most valuable thing I learned in her class was to try something you wouldn't normally try and to color wash the whole page so it blends. This was my first page and it was all about coming to Virginia. I need to do another color wash on it so that each element does not stand out so much. The map is actually a flap I added and it says Hampton underneath the flap. She even wanted us to put stuff on the page and then cover it up so that you couldn't see it. This is hard for a scrapbooker to do. I did accomplish this though by accident. My receipts that I pasted on the page apparently are heat sensitive and so when I used the heat tool they turned brown and disappeared right before my eyes. This gave the page a mysterious look and I actually ended up liking it but it was not the intended look at all. You can see it a bit right above the map. I did do a second page in the class and it was more like what she was trying to get us to do. Lots of paint and the elements become part of the page. You would think that something this messy was easy to do but it is surprisingly hard to make messy look good.

Journals are usually private places that you communicate what is important to you and what is going on in your life with emotions and feelings about it. I think your pages should reflect your personality and be a place that you get stuff out of your head but also learn about yourself too. Some days they may look ugly and who cares because no one is going to see it anyway. Other days they may be beautiful and you will want to look at them over and over again. I tried Traci's style and my journals will never look like hers because I'm not her. My journals are going to look like me and you will see more of that style because I am starting my Art Journal Challenge tomorrow. I am excited and nervous because it definitely will be a challenge to do it everyday.

Monoprints & Drizzles class

Traci Bautista who has a book on monoprints taught this class. She was very nice and the class was jam packed with ideas. We made about 30 different printed papers using her ideas. I brought them home and collaged them on this page in my journal about what I learned in the class. It was messy but fun and some of the papers where so beautiful. After the paint was dry we went over it with an assortment of pens and glitter glue. You can use different kinds of paper such as paper towels, pages ripped out of old textbooks, printed paper and plain paper. We used tools such as, foam rubber, needlepoint canvas, metal, textured wallpaper and a very handy brayer. Paints included solid and liquid acrylics, watercolor paints, liquid inks and ink pads, ink dabbers and so many kids of pens I couldn't even list them. Of course her pages where much more interesting than mine but I learned a lot and the techniques will spill over into all my art projects. My two favorite tools that I got to try and want in every color is the watercolor poster paint pens by Sharpie and the liquid watercolor paint by Colorations. Soooooo cool! You have to buy them on-line and http://www.dickblick.com/ has the best price. OK, that's it for now.

Acrylic painting and glazes

I was working in my art journal today trying out some of the techniques I learned in my acrylics class. I was definitely the newest student to painting with acrylics and it was hard to set my paintings up next to paintings of some amazing artists. My teacher, Diane Trout, was very supportive and even others in the class made some very good comments. You can always learn and especially from your mistakes. What was really cool was that everyone in the class had the same three colors and we all came up with different pallets. I wish I could show the pictures from the class because it was amazing. I think the acrylics class and the Monoprints and Drizzles class taught me the most. I will post a picture tomorrow from that class. I am so loving this big huge journal I am working in. I don't think I will be able to go back to the smaller format after this. I can do a two page spread now. YEAH! I know I posted twice today but you have no idea how exciting this is for me to have taken classes with other artists who love the same style of art I love and to have them encourage me. It was a dream come true. That is the story!

Taylor's Timepiece

I am going to showcase each day some of the art projects that I made at Art & Soul. This was actually my last class and was project oriented. Some of the classes I took were technique focused and so I didn't walk out of the class with a finished project. The clock started out as a white piece of Stampboard. I had never used this product before and found that I loved it. I covered it with inks and paint and rubber stamped the images then went back and used a small tool to scratch the paint off to create the white background you see. If I didn't scratch too hard then the color is more yellow. I added glitter embellishment and drilled a hole for the clock pieces. Even the second hand has red glitter on it. The final touch was gluing ribbon to the sides of the clock. This is going to be in my art room so I can keep better track of my time while I am out there. If you take a close look, I stamped "Time flies" right under the crown to remind me of that fact. Chrissie Hines was the teacher and she was fantastic. I was so tired by this point I wasn't sure I could make anything but I ended up really liking it. I loved the Stampboard (http://www.ampersandart.com/)and hope to use it again in the future.

I'm back

I am so excited to be back from vacation. It was a great time but amazingly tiring. How can having fun be so hard. I hardly slept the whole time I was gone. But that was the only bad part. Now that that is out of the way, I can tell you all the good stuff. I will touch on the highlights and tell you more later. Time with my family was so sweet. I kissed my grand baby a thousand times and while I was there he popped out two new teeth and started saying Mama. I also got to see what my daughters life is like in Hampton, Virginia. She is such a good mom and so considerate of my needs. It is so weird to see you children grow up and have lives of their own and become nice people, not the teenagers you knew. It was fabulous! We went to Virginia Beach and the sand is gold, not like the gray sand we have on the west coast.




We got to celebrate my son-in-laws 21st birthday even though it won't actually be for another month. I took them out to Red Robin and he got the biggest burger I have ever seen. I think it was called the Monster Burger. I don't know how he got his mouth around it.




I was also able to meet some of my daughters friends. We went to a Sushi/Hibachi restaurant and they fixed our food right at the table. It was so fun but when the flames flashed as high as the ceiling my little grand baby was scared. He got over it quickly though and enjoyed the flying knives and funny tricks the cook was doing.


My daughter and grand baby are on the right.

I spent five days with them and then went to a hotel for the Art & Soul retreat. Oh, I almost forgot. A tornado hit while I was there. It devastated a town 5 minutes down the road from where we were. It was a bit scary and I was grabbing the baby and running to the bathroom when they said it was 2 minutes away from us. We only saw heavy winds and torrential rains but I felt sorry for the people who lost their homes. Complete homes where turned into kindling in seconds. We felt very fortunate. Please say a prayer for those whose lives have been touched by this horrible event.