A Busy Little Blog Post

There's a lot going on in this blog post this morning!

 First, I was so excited when I opened Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Friday post this morning! Julie has a regular Friday feature called Art Journal Every Day. Each Friday she offers a post about her daily art journaling practice and will include guest artist interviews, photos of her art journal pages, tutorials, etc. Last week she did a post about the five basic art journal supplies she would recommend to a beginner art journaler and then asked her readers to submit a picture of the five items they would add to her list. So I submitted my photos and found this morning that Julie had included my photos in her post this morning. Thank you Julie! Here is the link: Balzerdesigns.typepad/artjournaleveryday

Second, I have a new tutorial on the blog: Altered Book Binder Journal. I have had so many requests for instructions on how I make my art journal binders from old books, I finally took some pictures as I made my most recent journal. Check out the tutorial page on the tabs at the top of the blog.

Last, I have some recent art journal pages for The Documented Life Project and The Art of Practising Gratitude challenge.

Doc Life Week 18 page spread

Doc Life wk 18 side 1

Doc Life wk 18 side 2

The Art of Practising Gratitude day 2: Positive

I hope your weekend includes time to be creative!

Create

The first theme for Bernice Hopper's The Art of Practising Gratitude challenge is create. Yesterday I did exactly that. I spent the day making background pages for my new altered book binder journal, I painted some paper, and I tried a few new techniques that Bernice introduced.

Bernice introduced us to two new techniques with a video on her challenge blog: adding texture and design to watercolor with salt and plastic wrap. Here is the plastic wrap technique result:

I like the result of the different lines and designs that result when the paint dries under the plastic wrap. I added some torn painted paper and some day this background may grow up to be an art journal page!

The salt technique was another story:

I used the salt technique on the background of the page I made for the challenge. The salt effect doesn't show up too much and the texture it left on the page after I brushed the salt off made it a bit difficult to write on.

Bernice provided us with the verse from Ephesians to spark our creativity and then gave us some questions to journal about: What does creativity mean to me? What am I thankful for in the creative areas of my life? I journaled about these questions on my page. The one I didn't have enough room for was, How do you express your creativity? I express my creativity through photography, decorating, art journaling, mixed media art, making journals, doing anything that involves color, and even through Bible study. Creating is a spiritual practice for me and one of the ways that helps me stay connected to God.

A day spent playing with paint and paper is a day spent being creative and experimenting. A lot of the papers I paint may never make it into my art, but I learn so much when I play, and playing with art energizes me and sparks new creativity. Some of the background pages form my playtime yesterday:

And one more art journal page:

I found this quote online from a book called The Artisan Soul by Erwin McManus. I have read his work before and was inspired by it, so I ordered the book and it should arrive today. Looking forward to being inspired in my faith and my art!

What inspires you to create?

You can visit Bernice's challenge blog by clicking the link to the right.

Lately...

In my last post I showed this little sneak peak:

I am so excited to share that I have been asked to do a guest post for Bernice Hopper for an art journaling challenge she is hosting in May called "The Art of Practising Gratitude". Join the fun! Here is a link to Bernice's challenge page: http://practisinggratitude2014.blogspot.co.uk/

Bernice has quite a few art journal artists lined up to do guest posts. My post will be live on May 16.

My expanding Documented Life Project journal:

I started working on these new altered book binder journals last week:

The bottom journal will be my second Documented Life Project journal. I'm keeping with the dictionary theme. The top journal is for everyday journaling. I am taking step by step pictures to make the tutorial/mini class I spoke of before. It's time consuming, but it is coming along nicely! I so appreciate all the wonderful comments, questions and requests for instructions from my fellow DLP members. Thank you all! I hope to have it done in the next few weeks.

My most recent DLP pages:

Week 17 Planner Page Spread

An extra page in my journal with a quote.

Week 17 Side 1

Week 17 side 2

Week 18 Challenge: An Inspirational Quote

We traveled south to WV this weekend for the wedding of our youngest niece. She was a beautiful bride. We stayed in a resort in the hills overlooking a beautiful wide river. Spring is further along down there and it was so good to see green trees and flowers. It is just starting in our neck of the woods. A late spring following the endless winter! What a year this has been! Hoping you all have a great week!

More Painted Circles

This past week was spring break for Toledo Public Schools. Because so much of my job involves working with our partnership with Keyser School I will generally take time off during their holiday breaks. This year there was just too much going on at work so I only took one day off and did a half day on Tuesday. I did a little spring cleaning ~ started washing windows inside and out.

On Wednesday there was a lot of talk in the Documented Life Project (DLP) Facebook group about my painted circles tutorial and it gave me the bug to paint some circles also!

I then added some to my Documented Life pages for the week:

Week 16 planner pages

And added some to an upcoming project that has me pretty excited! I can only give a sneak peek:

Sneak Peek: Coming in May!

In my last post I talked about how my DLP planner is expanding and that I had to add larger rings to accommodate the pages. I seriously don't think I will make it past the 6 month mark but am going to try to get all 6 months into this journal. I started putting together a new altered book binder journal to put the second half of the year into for DLP. I have had so many questions about how I made my altered book binder journal that I decided to do two at the same time AND take step-by-step pictures as I go. I am putting together a mini class on how to make them. This will be the first class for my little blog!Watch for it in the next month!

Enjoy your week and make some time for art!

The Documented Life Project Update

 We are into week 15 in The Documented Life Project. 36 weeks to go and my journal is getting pretty fat! The beauty of having made my journal into a 3-ring binder: I can expand it with larger rings, which is what a did a few weeks ago. I may however need to add a second journal for the second half of the year.

I last posted pictures on my blog from weeks 8 and 9, so I have some catching up to do in posting both the planner pages and the weekly challenge pages. I've had quite a few requests from others in the group on how to make an art journal binder such as mine. I'm going to begin working on a tutorial and will post it in the near future. For now here are my pages from weeks 10-15. For some of those weeks I have the planner pages done but not the challenge page and for others I have the challenge page done and not the planner pages. It's just how I roll when it comes to art! Hope you enjoy them. :)

Week 10 Challenge: A list of things that make me, me.

Week 10 page 1

Week 10 page 2

I punched my holes on the wrong side of the page so I ended up with two right sides, so I just went with it and have two pages for week 10 instead of my normal page spread. This is something I like about art journaling - just going with the flow and working mistakes in instead of starting over. It pushes my perfectionism outside the comfort zone, which is a good thing. :)

Week 11

Week 11 Challenge: Put a bird on it.

Week 12 Challenge: Use magazine cut-outs

Week 13 Challenge: add someone else's art to your page.

My sister drew a doodle for me while I was visiting her.

Week 12

Week 13

Week 15 Challenge: A monochromatic page