New Journal Themes

Last week on an Instagram post someone shared her artsy commonplace book and I remembered how much I loved this concept. A few years ago a friend got me connected to commonplacing, which is described as:

"Commonplacing is the act of selecting important phrases, lines, and/or passages from texts and writing them down; the commonplace book is the notebook in which a reader has collected quotations from works she or he has read. Commonplace books can also include comments and notes from the reader."  (From "Commonplaces: An Introduction" by John Hilgart and Van Hillard

Some other definitions:

• A book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.
• A notebook in which you enter memorabilia.
• The recording of words and ideas in a commonplace.

I have always done this practice, even before I knew it had a name. In my writing journals I tend to write down quotes and passages from books I am reading in order to take them in deeper and to come back to them again.

When I saw the Instagram post, and then went over to her blog, I got the itch to make an art journal just for commonplacing. Again, I already do this in my written journals, but I love the idea of combining the practice with art....cuz everything is better with a little art added, right? 

Here is the picture that caught my eye. Lovely, isn't it? You can see the rest of Brandi's commonplace book at brandikincaid.com

Now that I have completed the 100 Day Project, and I have 100 Rolodex cards in my holder, I'm kind of tired of working on the small scale that the cards offered. 

So, I spent this week thinking about what art project (um, projects) to do next. First I decided to take a binder I had that is kraft paper covered and already had a paint background on it. I don't even remember what I had originally made it for. Whatever it was I changed my mind and didn't use it. I covered the inside covers with some patterned paper and will use this for my commonplace art journal.

I haven't decided on a title for this book yet. My first page is the quote I used by Shelly Miller when I spoke at my church two weeks ago. This quote, along with a similar quote by my pastor, has become quite significant to me and I want to memorialize this part of my journey.

The other project I started this week is connected again to my speaking two weeks ago. (I wrote some about it in this post) For the past six months God has been doing some deep healing and transformation within me and the passage in Philippians I spoke out of has played a significant role. I want to have something tangible to serve as a reminder. So I transformed a Traveler's Notebook insert into a journal devoted to this. The practice of taking what God showed me in that passage and doing art journaling from it will also plant it deeper into my heart, mind and soul. Not only does art journaling give me a venue for using my creative muscles, it is also another tool in my therapeutic tool bag.  

I just don't seem to be able to work on one project at a time! 

Enjoy your weekend and make time to be creative! :)

Midpoint

July is the midpoint of the year and I find myself looking back - in fact, I've been doing a lot of that lately..but I'll save that for another post. Right now though I find myself at a place of contentment within this year. It's had some pretty rough spots, but it has also held some places of growth and healing, and of trying new things.

I have been on a journey over the past 6-7 years to find ways to use my voice. It has felt like a deep calling from God. Art, photography, and this blog have all been ways that have enabled me to, both find and use my voice. Last week I tried using my voice in a completely new way: I preached!

I have used my voice in different small ways before in our Sunday service - leading the service, doing an announcement, even partnering with my pastor a few times when we have talked about being missional or about outreach. But this was the first time that I took a passage of Scripture and preached a full message from it. You can hear it on our church website by clicking on the picture below:

Again, in a future post, I'll write more about the journey behind the message I preached. For now I just want to touch on the experience of it. I found myself amazingly calm and at home in the midst of speaking, which totally shocks me looking back at it. I was quite nervous in the time leading up to it. I love digging into Bible study and contribute from my studying on a team at our church which  collaborates to help form our Sunday messages and service. But taking what I have studied and turning it into a 30 minute message - that made me nervous! Being vulnerable and sharing parts of myself live and in-person in front of a bunch of people - that made me nervous! Yet I also experienced growth in the midst of it. And I think, in some way I haven't totally figured out yet, it was another step in my journey to becoming whole - my word for this year.

I shared a quote in my message from this summer's Grace Table Book Club book, Rhythm's of Rest by Shelly Miller. I find I keep coming back to this quote. It is ruminating in my soul. Especially when I combine it with a quote from a message my pastor preached from Galatians 5:16-21 earlier this summer. He said:

"There are these pockets of resistance within us that we continually struggle against." ~Doug Rumschlag

Shelly Miller writes mostly about practicing Sabbath. I find that God has so much for my whole being in the topic of Sabbath and rest. You can learn more about Shelly, her book, and Sabbath on her blog www.shellymillerwriter.com. 

While I'm sending you to read blogs I'd also like to send you to Kris Camealy's recent blog post, "When It's a Slow Transfiguration". I really resonated a great deal with what Kris' wrote in it.

On the art front, today I completed my final Rolodex scrap collage card for the 100 Day Project. While the project officially ended on the 12th, I'm okay with getting done late because IT'S DONE! It was a good challenge. It challenged me to work small, to use up scraps of paper and ephemera, and to get creative almost every day. I ended it with a favorite quote from Dr. Seuss. I like to end my travel journals with this quote, and believe me, this 100 day project has been a journey!

For the last seven weeks of the 100 Day Project I combined it with the ICAD (Index-Card-A-Day) challenge, using many of their prompts. The ICAD challenge doesn't end for another nine days. I'm feeling the itch to move on to other projects, but I may keep going and finish this one since I'm so close to the end. I have posted my 100 Day Project and ICAD cards on Instagram. (Link in the right hand sidebar.)

I feel somewhat caught up now. :)

I'll be back sometime this week with more on my journey and some thoughts on Commonplace books. I recently read a blog post about them and it reminded me how much I have loved this practice in the past.

So, how are you doing midpoint in the year?

Meandering 6.30.2017

"Meandering: adjective; the act of following a winding or indirect course. 

Ramble, roam, zigzag, circuitous. A blog post about a variety of things; 

a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

It's been a while. I have these aspirations about being a regular blogger, putting up posts at least twice a week. The reality is I barely make it happen twice a month! But, I really enjoy blogging so for now I'll post when I can and keep striving for my personal goal of posting more often.

I am on day 78 of the 100 Day Project. My creative practice of choice for this project was to make collages from scraps on Rolodex cards. I combined this project with the Index-Card-A-Day (ICAD) project which began on June 1st, since Rolodex cards are included as index cards. The difference between the two projects is the 100 Day Project is totally self-led, while the ICAD project provides daily prompts. Some days I use the prompt and some days I don't. You can see all of my Rolodex art cards on Instagram (link in the sidebar on the right).

My Rolodex is filling up nicely. :)

Ever since I began this venture into making art with paper I have been drawn to collage. Lately I have been drawn to botanical collage pieces. I have come across a few collage artists whose botanical themed pieces just blow me away. One in particular, Julie Hamilton, paints her own papers to use in her collage art. I'm a sucker for painted paper!

From www.juliehamiltoncreative.com

A few other collage artists I admire for their botanical collage work are: Tiffany Calder Kingston and Jacgui Grace. Click their names and you will visit their websites.

So a few weeks ago, inspired by these artists, I painted some papers. I love to use the bookend papers from the books I take a part. This paper in older books has a great weight to it and I love how the color ages over time. With the painted papers I tried my hand at some botanical collage.

I even found myself wanting to bring home ferns and leaves from my walks in order to trace them for collage! But I didn't go that far. I used some of my stencils and used drawings from plant books to make templates. Then I used some of the painted papers to make a color wheel for my first page for the Get Messy Season of Color.

It's fun to try new techniques with art and I love combining them with my love of nature!

Faith & Creativity: Guest Post at Newly Creative

My friend, Bernice Hopper, is doing a series this month about faith and creativity. You can find her original post describing her thoughts behind the series HERE. Bernice wanted to explore whether or not art is "Christian" if it does or does not include overtly Christian images, OR is it "Christian" simply because the artist is a Christian.

So far she has had guest posts from Susan Mulder and Valerie Sjodin. Today is my guest post where I share my views on my faith and how it impacts my creativity and art. I hope you'll pop over and read my post HERE on her blog Newly Creative. While you are there read the rest of the posts or clink on the links above in this post.

Circles and Walls

In my last post I mentioned that I was taking a class by Tammy Garcia at Daisy Yellow Art that was introducing me to new products and techniques. I have loved painting with my fingers ever since I started painting circles (see post here and tutorial here). So when Tammy introduced her technique called The Wall, and she did it with her fingers, I was hooked! I thought I would share a few insights and tips on the pages I made from this technique. I didn't plan on doing this post so I didn't take pictures along the way. I also will not share many details of the actual Wall technique in order to not infringe on Tammy's class material.

This was my first attempt at The Wall technique:

I loved the grungy look that resulted from the technique, but I don't think I used enough paint on this one. In figuring out the differences between the heavy body acrylic paint I was introduced to in this class, and the craft acrylic paints I usually use, the opacity of the heavy body acrylic requires using it a bit more and in layers to achieve the look I want. I tend to like the text of my background paper to peak through the paint. I usually get this effect by painting the paper with gesso before I paint it with color. However, it was recommended in the class that for these techniques that we NOT use gesso. At some point, though, I will experiment with gesso and the heavy body acrylic paints.

The next session added circles on top of The Wall technique. Now, if you have followed me for a while then you know how much I like circles. They pop up often on  my art journal pages, often without any forethought or planning. So, I was all about this project!

As I played I decided to put my own twist on the project - also no big surprise for me! But I think that is the beauty of taking classes or using tutorials - we learn new techniques and then add our own unique styles to them, rather then making cookie cutter copies of the artist's original. In the class we are using an altered book art journal for our class projects. I decided to do this piece on a loose piece of paper. One of my favorite types of paper to use to make background pages for my art journals is index pages from older atlases.

There a few reasons why I like this particular paper:

• It's large - anywhere from 9x12" up to 12x16".
• It's heavyweight, especially those from the older books. The weight of the paper holds multiple layers of paint well. And I enjoy building on layers of paint to achieve the types of backgrounds I enjoy.
• The text is tiny, like in a dictionary, but dictionary paper is usually fairly thin. Tiny text makes for a wonderful subtle background. 
• The older books generally used a cream paper, which ages to a nice tan-ish patina, while newer atlases use a brighter white paper. I'm sure it doesn't really matter too much what color the background paper is since I cover most of it with paint, but in my mind I think that the whiter paper affects the paint color. I'll have to test that theory at some point. Besides, I just like the patina of aged things!

I played for a long time, layering the paint, until I achieved the look I wanted. Then I tore the finished Wall page into strips and glued them slightly out-of-line onto a page in my class art journal. Although it's subtle, I like the effect of the torn, out-of-line strips on the background. I then added my circles using my favorite types of vintage ephemera, and used both a black Stabilo-All pencil and a black Neo-Colors II watercolor crayon to get the shading around the circles. The finishing touch was spattering paint in black and white.

I was quite happy with the results, and for a change, I didn't add any words to this page. I think words would actually take away from it rather than enhance it.

I had enough of the Wall paper leftover to make a background page in my Traveler's Notebook.

As always, you can find packs of ephemera papers in my Etsy shop. I may even create packs of vintage index pages since I have SO many atlases! Give me your thoughts on that in the comments below.

Thank you to my friend, Diane Kundrat, for encouraging me to write about some of my techniques and tips on my blog. Diane lives in Arizona and we have been online friends for 5-6 years as a result of my blog. A few weeks ago we finally got to meet in person in Cleveland where we spent an afternoon art supply shopping together!