Thursday, March 28, 2013

Art Journal Page: Right Amount of Wrong

Here's my newest art journal page. I can't decide if I like it or not. I love the background. The girl is ridiculous, which was on purpose. I was playing around with some magazine images and it reminded me of a Mr Potato Head. I think the result looks like a Muppet. The words say "Just the Right Amount of Wrong".

Monday, March 25, 2013

How I do Project Life and Week 12

Last week, I wrote a bit about why I do Project Life. I figured this week, I'd write a bit about how I go about it.

First of all, I use my iPod touch to take all my pictures. The quality suffers a little, but I actually take pictures, which I rarely did before. I transfer the pictures to my computer, usually twice a week, and rename the files to the date the picture was taken. Any editing to the photos is almost always done with various apps on the iPod. I print most of my pictures square, because it leaves room for journaling and/ or the date. I print the pictures myself, on white cardstock (which is funny because I have a huge stack of photo paper, but never think to use it).

I keep a small piece of paper on my desk with the dates for the week and every day, I try to jot down anything interesting that happened, or if it's a holiday or if I took a picture that day that I think I'll want to use.

I keep up with Project Life every week. That means I don't use a whole lot of embellishments or scrapbooky style layouts. I keep it simple because I know if I get behind, it will be less enjoyable and more like a chore. As it is, I never finished my wedding scrapbook from 13 years ago,and I never started the one from our honeymoon trip.

My weeks are Sunday to Saturday. I know a lot of people do Monday to Sunday so they don't have to break up the weekend, but that's not been a problem for me so far.

I use baseball card pages for my album. There are 9 pockets, each 2 1/2 by 3 1/2. The first pocket is always a date card with the week number on it and the last pocket I use to list what book(s) I read that week. That leaves 7 pockets, one for each day was my original thought, but I don't think it's ever worked out that way. I often use 2 or more photos from the same day, and other days have none. But it works for me.

Whenever I sit down to work on Project Life (usually on Sunday, but it varies), I start by looking at the list I jotted down of anything that happened during the week, and I decide if I want to use any of it. I also go through the photos for the week and pick out the ones I want to use. I pick at least one art/ craft photo, most often an art journal page. The rest varies depending on what pictures I've taken. I usually have a couple pictures of my dog, as well as some sky or other scenery pictures. If there's a holiday, I print something for that; if I don't already have something, I'll look online for something that works. If I still have another space to fill, I find a picture from a TV show I've been watching or one of those free printable quotes or art prints to use as a filler card.

I've talked before about the background papers I use. I'm still using the same system and I'll probably continue to throughout the year. I've been downloading freebie journaling cards for two years or so. I really thought I would use them and printed a stack of them at the beginning of the year, but I only use one or two a week. My pages are mostly pictures, although I am trying to do more journaling.

I don't know how long it takes me to do the week start to finish. Less than an hour if I was just working on Project Life, but I'm usually watching TV or something and get distracted by that and just watch for a while before going back to what I'm working on.

That's pretty much the process I use. There's not much to it, but I thought I'd record it here, and maybe compare at the end of the year to see if anything has changed.

Here's week 12. I've decided to try writing a bit of explanation of each day picture. Most of them are self-explanatory, but I'll give it a try.


1 Date card with week #
2 St Patrick's Day
3 Sky picture
4 Art Journal page
5 Sky picture #2
6 Annabelle- I take a lot of photos of her in front of this door, mostly because she runs when she sees me with my iPod out to take a picture, but she has to stop here to wait for me to open the door
7 Annabelle again- she gets mean when she thinks you are after her treats
8 I'm currently obsessed with Martin Freeman. This week I watched The Office (the UK version).
9 Read this week: The Game and Locked Rooms, both by Laurie R King (#s 7 and 8 in the Mary Russell Mysteries series)



I am linking up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

New Art Journal page!

My newest page. It doesn't have a title- I'm really bad at coming up with titles unless its really obvious what it should be.

The words in the upper right corner is from a fortune cookie and says, "You have an active mind and a keen imagination."



Here is the first layer. Phone book pages, spray ink, and paint.



Then I added gesso, more spray ink and paint through stencils and punchinella. You can't really see it in the picture, but there's also some random rubber stamping in black.



The girl is from a magazine. The wings are from clip art butterflies. And I used a fortune cookie fortune.
I drew around the girl and fortune with a black water color pencil and  blended with a water brush.
I also outlined the wings with a clear star Gelly Roll pen, but I think I did that after I took the picture.

This page didn't turn out quite like I intended, but I like it.


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Why I do Project Life and week 11

When I first heard about Project Life, I thought it was a good idea, but I didn't think it was for me. I rarely go anywhere or do anything worth taking pictures and I don't have any kids.

Last year, I started doing Project 365, where you take a photo every day. I decided to narrow my focus and just take a picture of my dog, Annabelle, every day. (To see them, click here.) Later, I decided to also take a picture of whatever art or craft I do each day. Sometimes it's just one tiny bit on an art journal page or a doodle in a sketchbook, but I do something creative every day. I also started taking a random photo every day. This could be a picture of anything- people, places, food; but it mostly ends up being pictures of the sky.

I thought it was sad that I took all these photos and never did anything with them. I occasionally printed one that I really liked, but mostly not.

This year, I decided to at least try Project Life. I thought it would be a good way to use the photos I take. I like it so far. I think I need to do more journaling so it's not just page after page of pictures. But even as it is, I like it. I find myself flipping through it pretty regularly, even though it's been less than three months since I started.

I definitely intend to continue with Project Life throughout the year. I have some vague ideas of how to adapt it for next year so that it works better for me, but I've got quite a bit of time to think about it.





I am linking up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday!


Friday, March 15, 2013

Art Journal page: Clover

I'm rather proud of this page. Not really because of how it looks (it's ok, but not my favorite page ever), but because it's mostly journaling. I very rarely do any personal journaling on an art journal page. I mostly use quotes or song lyrics or just one word. But for this page I just started writing until I had filled up the whole page. It's nothing earth shattering, and probably doesn't make a lot of sense to anyone else but me. But I'm glad I did it and maybe I'll try to write more on future pages.

The background is acrylic paint (applied with a credit card because I was being lazy and didn't want to clean paintbrushes afterwards); the picture is from some junk mail; and I did the journaling with a gold Sharpie marker.



Friday, March 8, 2013

Art Journal page: Playful

My newest art journal page.
Her face is not so blotchy-looking in person.
The colors are wonky, mostly due to me being too lazy to get a better picture. The yellowish washi tape in the picture is actually lime green.




Here is another page I worked on this week. Once I got to this point, I ran out of steam. I still haven't figured out what, if anything, I'm going to add to it. I will probably just leave it as it is unless I get inspired.






Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Project Life week 9

Really boring week, so I used lots of pictures of my dog. I would have used a filler card kind of thing- I have some all ready to go, but to be honest, I forgot about them when I was choosing what photos to print. By the time I remembered, I was done and decided to leave it.