Sunday, February 2, 2014

Projects for 2014

I've been trying to write a blog post for a month about the different projects I plan to do this year and I just keep putting it off again and again. But hey- it's February already. It's time for me to buckle down and get this post written!

One of the things I'm doing this year is a year-long altered book class taught by Lisa Vollrath of Ten Two Studios. I've been interested in altered books for years, but never really did anything about it. One of the books I'm using I've had for three or four years from when I first became interested in altered books. Looking online, I was overwhelmed with information and spent about a year mostly just watching YouTube videos and reading blog posts because I was scared of paint, since I had never really painted before. Some how I got focused on art journaling instead of altering books. So I'm taking the class for motivation more than anything.
So far, it's been very informative. A lot of the info is stuff I'd heard of already or figured out for myself while art journaling, but some of it has been new to me. There's a lot of feedback and discussion, which is great. I don't usually like to participate in that sort of thing (I belong to several art focused Facebook groups and rarely, if ever post or comment) but I'm trying and I do read everyone else's comments.
Here is my first completed page:



Another project I'm doing is the Documented Life Project. It sort of a combination art journal and planner with weekly challenges. I'm not using it as a planner- I had the idea before I found the Project and made my own book and there's isn't really room to use it as a planner. I'm using it as a combination written journal and art journal/ sketch book. I know some people do personal journaling on art journal pages, but I never have. I've always kept in separate, mostly so I could show the art to people and not worry about them reading it.
Here is the cover of my journal. The background is security envelope pieces (glued to a piece of cardboard) painted with twinkling H2Os and the picture came from a travel magazine I picked up the last time I was in Louisiana. This photo was taken before I finished putting all the monthly tabs in.



I'll probably do another post later on to show some of the inside pages. I'll want to blur some of the more personal journaling before I post pictures.

I'm not doing Project Life this year. I did finish last year and I still like the idea of it, but it just doesn't work for me. I think this year, I'll do a sort of smash book/ scrapbook kind of thing where I don't have to fill up a whole page every week. I can just use as many pages as I need to for the month, however many that is. I haven't actually started this yet, but I do have plans.

There are other projects I want to do this year and several that I want to finish, but I hope to blog those as I do them.