First Journal

I have been wanting to learn how to make journals for a long time. So I put it as one of my intentions for my second season of the 100 Day Reality Challenge. That way I knew I would do it. Here is my first attempt. I used Teesha Moore's technique using canvas boards for the front and back pieces. So here is my first try.

I made a zillion mistakes but I think it will be a functioning journal. I was using this one as a test, I have material for one with heavy watercolor paper and a bigger size. Hopefully I will do a better job next time. You really can't tell the mistakes by looking at the pictures, but I had things that weren't centered or cut evenly, the holes for sewing were not even and the sewing is not tight enough and on and on. Practice makes perfect though so I will try again soon.


















This is the front.



















This is the back

















This shows the inside papers I used. I am so glad I took the time to do this. It really feels good to get some goals accomplished. When was the last time you tried something new?

A flock of birds

Sarah sent me this flock for my birthday. Two are on clips and three are on magnets. I had mentioned I wanted some bird ornaments for my tree after Christmas so now they are starting to appear. These ones are so cute.

Wonderful Birthday

I had the most fantastic birthday. I had greetings from many of my Art friends and 100 day challenge friends and other internet friends and family and then went out to dinner with 14 people. It was great. Here's the video.


















Here are some of the goodies I got. I think it was the year of the bracelet since I received 4 of them. They were all made by hand so extra special in my book.















These three were made by my sister Peggy.














This wild one I love and it was made by my girlfriend Gari.













The earrings came from my sister Marianne and are Laurel Burch but kind of heavy, so if I find I can't wear them I may use them in a necklace or as an embellishment for something else.














Here is a hat my sister Peggy sent me, it is knitted and then felted, I love it. Its the perfect color Purple...














This print was given to me by my friend Kay. Its a beautiful fall setting, I wanted to grab one of those apples right out of the basket.

Finshed I think!

There comes a time in a project where you don't know what else to do so I guess you need to say its done. I really learned a lot doing this painting. I am better at mixing colors, learned what colors looked crappy with a blue background an how to fix mistakes. I look forward to the painting class I am taking next month since I know I will learn so much more. Now I am ready to work on something different. I made a little movie with all the stills leading up to the finish.



I would appreciate any comments and constructive criticism about my painting. I am trying to learn so if you see anything you'd like to point out leave a comment or send me an email.

Sunday Morning

Its Sunday Morning, I decided to stay home today. I am going to work on the painting today. Its sorta funny I stare at it everyday and think I need to work on it but I do something else instead. Its some fear again, so I am going to conquer that today and move forward.

Just as I was about to go to the studio Dave came home with this.


















Its my birthday present and he could not wait till Wednesday to give it to me. He is such a little kid sometimes. No its not the ipod but what the ipod sits in. Its a charger and speaker and the sound is fantastic, has its own remote and I really like it. So of course I had to play with it for awhile.

I did go work on the painting again but it still has a lot of work. I have painted the dress 4 or 5 colors and then just slabbed white paint on it to start over again. Ah the joys of creating.

I haven't done much with the journal page either. Sharon from All Norah's Art wrote and told me she uses one layer of napkin so I guess I was right there. I painted over the flower a little, stamped the word spring on a separate piece of paper and glued it to the page and then decided I hated it and ripped it off which of course took off the paint and gesso and I am back to the taped page I started with. Sometimes art really is a process. Maybe tomorrow I will have something worth showing. Happy Creating to all of you.

New Ideas

Yesterday I spent most of my time scanning letters and organizing things for the book about my Grandparents. I really got a new insight or revelation about the project. It became clear that this project is like doing a thesis or having a job and I need to start treating it like that. Its always been this small past time and if I continue to see it that way it will take me another twenty years. I moved my computer and printer to the kitchen table where I can spread out and this will now be my focus. I have set new goals regarding the project. My plans are to finish scanning the letters next week and start printing and reading them after that. I just realized I have a good twenty or so letters that have no dates so I am going to have to figure out where they fit into their story. That will be challenging but still fun.

I started a journal page last night. I am trying to incorporate a piece of a napkin in it. I separated the layers of paper but I think I should have kept them intact. The flower looks very transparent now. I think I just may paint over it. We'll see how that works, I'll post it later.

I went shopping for a new desk but nothing seemed right so I guess I will be waiting longer for a new desk. I want to find the one that will work perfectly for me and sometimes that it hard.

I hope you are all having a great weekend...

Cutest couple

I saw these two hanging out on the river on my way home today. It was really a beautiful day. When I first stopped they were talking or screeching. I tried to record a movie of that but it stopped by the time I got going with the camera. It sure was interesting to hear, usually they are very quiet. The one eagle moved to a branch closer. Maybe they wanted to be closer.

Fantastic Concert

The Barrage Concert was beyond fantastic. The band consisted of 6 on violin, 2 on guitar and a drummer. The fiddlers danced incredibly while they were playing. It was quite incredible. If you ever have a chance to see them perform go for it. You won't regret it. I'd go see them again in a heartbeat.













These are my final pages for the RR book. They are done and off in mail.













I have been working on a painting. I am taking some in progress pictures that I will post when its done. It will be fun to see how much better I get after taking Paulette's class.
















This is after my first session of working on the face. Here you get to see the new easel in use. I love it by the way.

















This was the second session. I want to make the neck bigger, its pretty skinny I think. Do some more work on the hair and the face and the background too. I'll be changing the dress color and more. Yes, needless to say It still needs a lot of work.

New site for 100 day challenge

You'll notice something new on my sidebar it says I am a member of the 100 day reality challenge. Its a new social network site for the 100 day challenge. If you click on the link it will take you to my page and then you can see others too and join yourself. If you are all interested in these concepts I encourage you to check this out. It will change your life. I also have a blog over there where I will talk about 100 day challenge goals and experiences.














I have been trying to get these pages done for the latest round robin. They all seem to be this blue aqua shade this time.














The theme was texture and they wanted us to use the theme of our book. Remember mine was kindred spirits, so you'll see new and old photos amongst them. I am not sure if they are really done yet.














I really liked the picture here, of a secret shared between two friends.














I need to add something here but I am not sure what. I have 2 more pages to do but I think I may just make backgrounds and journal on them.










I am headed to see this group tonight. They are a Celtic group that fiddles and dances and totally entertains. They are called Barrage and I think it will be great. I only found out about the concert over the weekend so th only seats left were way in the back but I still think it will be fun. Dave can't go because of his cold so I invited two girlfriends. It should be a blast.

Online classes

For all those who asked about online classes.

Kathy Johnson's blog shows her CD's and has link to her classes on her sidebar. I could not recommend her highly enough she is wonderful.

Paulette Insall list her classes on her blog also. Her painting faces class is almost full. Her backgrounds class is full.

I bought a birthday present just for me... You can see the easel I got to your left. This is the Bob Ross table top easel. Suzi Blu raved on how much she liked it so I checked it out. It was only with that 40% off coupon that I could afford it. Easels are pretty pricey and with the coupon I managed to get 32.00 off the price. You can't beat that. I have it all set up with a canvas ready to go. The color is darker than the picture actually a nice warm elm. The only thing I don't like is that it doesn't fit where I wanted to put it. I hate it when you buy something new and it makes you rethink the arrangement of the entire room. Now that of course has nothing to do with the easel really. I actually like it and think it will be great to use.













I found this little journal kit yesterday while out looking for inspiration at all the craft stores in town. Its by 7 gypsies and it has a chipboard cover that you can decorate in any way you want and 3 sets of signatures and instructions on putting it together. Being the journal fanatic that I am I couldn't resist it. I think it will be fun to decorate and put together.

A sign of Spring

My dear H gave me these tulips for Valentines Day, They just seem to say Spring to me. I also got a small box of white chocolate truffles from Sarah's Candy Cottage, they make the best candy locally. They are really good.

I found this online weaving magazine for any of you weavers out there. It really is nice, lots of good stuff to look at.

I got my One World One Heart gift all packaged up and ready to go. I'll get it in Mondays mail. I have to admit I am glad that its over with this time. The volume of participants made it a lot more work than last time. I didn't enter anywhere near the number of drawings, it started taking up too much of my time. Congrats to all the lucky winners.

I have another round robin book to work on. This one has a theme of texture so I think I will try some new things. My first page I am laying down masking tape and then gesso and paint and who knows what else. I want to try to push myself with something new this time.

I signed up for Paulette Insall's painting faces class. I have to wait till March 31 now. That is when it starts. I took an online class with Kathy Johnson on watercolor painting and it really was awesome so I hope this one will be the same caliber.

and the Winner is...

Its time to announce the winner for the One World One Heart Contest... The envelope please....

The winner is Robin at Robin's Artful Musings. A big thanks goes out to Lisa Oceandreamer for organizing this mammoth event and for all of you who took time to enter my contest. Robin I left a comment on your blog so please email me asap.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. I hope you have a day full of love laughter and a little bit of chocolate.

I won't be posting my One World One Heart Give away until this evening so you still have time to enter. I am going to use the random number generator to pick the name due to the amount of participants this year. So check back here later for the winners name.

Three and half hour lunch

I met my friend Kate for lunch this afternoon. We hadn't seen each other in eight months so we ended up talking about everything it was a nice relaxing time. We were at Chili's and after eating we decided on dessert.














This is the cutest dessert ever. I felt like we were in Paris eating in an oudoor cafe. These dishes are tall shot glasses. The dessert had a brownie in the bottom with layers of custard chocolate and cream, yummy. The waiter kept coming back to see if we wanted more drinks or anything else. He once said he couldn't believe we were still there. It should have dawned on me then but I never realized how long we had been there until I looked at the time. We had been there more than 3.5 hours... The longest lunch I have ever had.















My friend Kai sent me this lovely Valentine and ATC, thanks Kai.
































This is a get well card my friend Ang sent me, how sweet that was, thanks Ang.














After two tries Fed Ex finally delivered a package to my house. They lost it the first time and I had to have the company send me a new one. I have a set of 100 markers now, I love all the colors.

Another Blog

There is a lot a talk about the book The New Earth and the Oprah class on it coming up in March. I started a another blog at the request of a friend to have a discussion about the book. If you are reading it and taking the class and want a smaller forum for discussion send me an email and I will invite you to our blog. There is a forum also on Oprah.com but with 170,000 people signed up that is a little overwhelming. This is much smaller and more intimate. So join us if you like.

The sun came out today

The Sun was out today and we had a beautiful blue sky. What a treat that was. Everything in town is melting so there is water everywhere. That will soon end as we have another chance for snow coming soon. In case anyone is interested the Spaghetti Sauce came out wonderful.

Here are some recent pages from my Art Journal














This was from last month, I used parts of napkins for embellishment and Faber-Castell Pitt pens, the sepia ones for writing.


















This is a page I did after attending the Democratic Caucus last week.














This is still a work in progress
















I did this little drawing in church yesterday, I guess it should have gone in the last post, oh well

A day in the life

My friend Cindy challenged me to show a day in my life. I don't think its that interesting but here goes.














First thing this morning I turned on the computer and checked my mail. With all the One World One Heart Mail I really need to keep on top of it.













I say good morning to my ever faithful dog Flynn.














I stop and take a load of laundry out of the dryer and put more clothes in there so I have something to wear to church.














Then I hop into the shower, all you get to see are my lovely feet....













I look outside and see yes there is still a ton of snow out there.













Time for breakfast, I eating lite since I know there is a potluck at church. Here are the ingredients for my smoothie. Skim milk, a banana and some blueberries.













...And the result hmmm it tasted as yummy as it looks.












Here is what I am taking to the potluck, rhubarb cobbler.













When I get outside the snow is all frosty and looks so pretty.














After church I come back home and get this new bookshelf all put together. Its for my blue and white bedroom.













Then the lack of sleep last night gets to me and I lie down to take a little nap on the couch.













Dave thinks it would be funny to put Flynn's toy on me.. Ha ha.













After a little rest I get up and start making my world famous spaghetti sauce, well not really but I think it tastes pretty awesome. These are my new pans, they look great don't they.













Here is the start of the sauce. I will mix it up in this stock pot and then put it in 2 crock pots to cook overnight. If I cook on the stove I really have to watch it so it doesn't burn, It really is easier in a crock pot but they don't make a crock pot big enough so I use two of them













Then later I spend time watching this, the music has been great. Can someone tell me why Tina Turner never ages.














I also am multitasking by entering some of the many contests for One World One heart. I finish my day making this very long entry.

Ok everyone else its your turn to show a day in your life....