January is always a good excuse for falling behind. Putting away Christmas, planning and celebrating Gaby's birthday, Marc's annual trip to PR, sometimes with us, sometimes not, these are the events that are always part of our January. And for the past 2 years Nick has had his winter School of Rock show smack in the middle of it all. So things like finishing up my December Daily (December 23rd and holding!) and keeping up art journaling and blogging just seem to fall by the wayside.
My intention is to share my weekly art journaling. Weekly, of course! To catch up, here's what I did in January:
I played around with my new cheapy watercolours on the inside cover. No gesso. Black India Ink, white Sharpey, TH stamps, 7 Gypsies tape, ticket - also TH, and a fortune I had hung to. Fun and done!
Gesso, then blue water colour. These are Claudine Hellmuth foam and acrylic stamps. Used acrylic paint and black Stazon. Freehand cut the January letters from some MM packaging, and of course the catalyst for this, Julie's Art Journal Every Day button. Random journaling about the week, and fortunes from lunch with Marc.
The birthday/SOR week. Gessoed these pages, added colour with Distress Ink. Used Tattered Angels masks and Glimmer Mist over the DI colour. The rest is bits and pieces from the week, including photos of both kids. Disclaimer: Nick does NOT have a Mother tat - that's just doodling! Some of the doodling and journaling was done in India Ink and some using FC Pitt pens. The colour from these pens stayed pretty true on the background colour. I like that!
A crazy week, starting with Gab's birthday sleepover, MLK Day of service, and two sick kids. Despite that, we made it to PR for the last 4 days. Marc had challenged me to travel without my laptop, so I made sure I had an art journaling kit put together to bring along. I'll have to photograph and share that in another post.
I gessoed these pages prior to leaving home. On a sunny Saturday when the sunburns kept us inside, Gaby and I worked on these pages together. All of the colour is Prang watercolours. I drew out a grid, painted it in black, and Gaby and I filled in the one inch squares with whatever popped into our heads. She ended up painting more of them than I did! I cut out the letters for Puerto Rico from a business card I picked up at a dive shop on Isla de Culebra. The business card was from a fabulous restaurant that Marc and I visited Thursday, the tag is from sunglasses we picked up for Nick, and the red sticker is the USDA inspection sticker we got at check in, on our way home.
Since January had already seen its share of snow days/late arrivals/early dismissals, I was inspired to do a snowy spread. Gessoed, added punched snowflakes, painted over in white acrylic, then inked with blue. I then added a variety of snowflakes from my stash - chipboard, felt, stickers, whatever. And some distress stickles for sparkle. I journaled in the spaces between the snowflakes. The "just the facts" stamp is from Lori, a fellow member of Julie's Art Journal Every Day group. Check out her etsy shop ElvieStudio -- goodness!!
This journal, my first real art journal, is a Moleskine Sketchbook, 5 1/4 X 8 1/4, 104 pages. Perfect for 52 weeks! I picked mine up at Barnes and Noble I had a gift card, a coupon and I have a B&N membership, which gives you 10% off. I picked up another one for Gaby when she expressed an interest in having her own. I lucked out searching B&N online cuz a couple of weeks ago they were featuring 30% off of their moleskines. With my memberhip I also got free shipping, and we had it within a week.
If you're on the fence about art journaling, don't be. Get off the fence, jump right in. Julie has organized all of the posts related to this year long art journaling journey, on her blog Once there, scroll down a bit and you'll find the Art Journal Every Day logo. Click on that, and all of the posts are at your fingertips. Thoughts on content, products, finding the time, it's all there. There is also a Flickr Group with over 200 members. You can find images of a variety of pages, and ongoing discussion on this topic.
It's fun, it's additive, it's therapeutic, it's creative, it's satisfying.
