A Little Imagination and a Pile of Junk

a tale of three journals: journal the third

 

I first introduced you to Journal the Third in this post. It was the first new journal that I'd bought in very long time--I can't even remember how long. Usually, I prefer to make them myself because 1.) I can, and 2.) I usually already have a specific idea in mind about the size, feel and page makeup for each new journal I start. Although there are some amazing journals out there that I often find myself drooling over, I rarely run into one, outside a plain spiral bound watercolor book, that I think will quite fit what I need in a journal. To be completely honest, Journal the Third is definitely slumming it coming into our little family of journals. She is way too good for the rest of us--me included--but has been a real trooper and adapted wonderfully to the back and forth between adoration and abuse that my journals all to often see around here.

 

When I first got her, she welcomed me right in, but I still tried to protect her by taking off her lovely linen cover every time we got messy with the paint. But by now, she's just one of the girls and prefers me not to get too fussy with her.

Besides the obvious, the beauty of Journal the Third is the way she's built. Sturdy and solid with a variety of pages to choose from different weights and sizes. It all makes for fabulous journal building. I've noticed that it comes more naturally for me to extend a page here or tuck in a little something there than in any of my other books. So many nooks and crannies. I imagine it could take me years to exhaust all the possibilities in this book.

 

Journal the Third opens up with something completely different for me. Who knows where this came from. Because it's the smallest of my journals--about 7x8.5x2"--I carry it around with me most often. The finished pages tend to be less polished (if anything I make can be said to be polished) and have more inclusions. I've added all kinds of stuff in here; everything has a story. To me, there's a sort of 'travel journal' feel to #3.

Some in progress pages:

Some completed pages: 

So there you go. This is where I've been keeping myself lately. With a few stray minutes at the sewing machine or knitting needles. I have several other journals in-progress that I haven't worked in in a while and I'll give you a peek at those as well if you're interested. I know I'll make it back around to them eventually so I do keep them close. If there is one thing that I could accomplish by showing you my 3 closest companions, it would be to just encourage those of you who are thinking about art journaling to give it a try. It is the most user-friendly art medium out there. I don't consider the work I do in my journals to be my 'best' art, but it is definitely the work that is closest to my heart. If I never ventured outside the bounds of the book, I'd still be one satisfied artist.
 
Well, it seems that the holiday season is fast upon us and I'm beginning to feel that hurry-up-and-enjoy-it-before-it-slips-away feeling which has me working on a hulking November to-do list that I'll share with you next time. Until then.... 

guaranteed goosebumps

sparkly & bright

A "cold" front blew through South Texas this morning leaving us with rumbling grey skies and a crisp North wind, which equals heaven to me. As the air shifted and the wind began to pick up, we quickly pulled out of the house for an early morning showing--a good excuse for breakfast out and a quiet crowd-free stroll through Target. It just so happened that the Target elves were busily unpacking Christmas tinsel, chocolates, and glowing lights. It was perfect timing to put us all in the mood for the holidays. (Now when tomorrow's forecast of 80 degrees with plenty of sun returns, remind me not to forget the holiday spirit.) Knowing we may be moving during the holidays or at least hoping for the perfect family to buy our house for their Christmas present, there probably won't be too much decorating this season, which is my favorite part, of course. But we'll make the best of it and look forward to next Christmas...in Colorado? We can only hope!

So, since we're all in the mood for the holidays and since I'm still finishing up a few things before I can show you Journal the Third, I thought I'd share my pretty Papaya! packages.

What a fun challenge this was! It's actually hard for me to call it a challenge when I had such fun and it all came together so easily. I love it when that happens.

I ended up making several gifts because I love this sort of thing and I just couldn't resist. Maybe I should keep them out as sort of holiday spirit props. To get us through the more Spring-like than Fallish weather around here.

I seriously love this patchwork envelope. It's definitely going up somewhere. Make sure you take a look at all of the other pretty packages here and here.

a tale of 3 journals: journal the second

 

 

Journal the Second, aka, the file folder journal, is by far my favorite journal at present. It's similar to this one but I'm waiting to bind it all together when it's done or when I'm done, whichever comes first. The covers are made from a spray painted file folder stitched together with heavy weight fabric to give it a little extra strength. I've also nestled in another folder to hold all the pages together nicely until I decide to bind them up. You'll notice that the cover is not really decorated, unlike Journal the First. In fact, I don't think too much about covers. My usual modus operandi is to work on the cover only if it screams at me that something specific needs to be done (the 10 cent stamp keeps me humble and reminds me of what my thoughts are really worth). Otherwise I leave it for the very end. Once the journal is finished or filled, I'll decorate the cover to kind of tie it all in together. Either that or I'll ignore it and move on happily to the next one.

The beauty of Journal the Second is its simplicity (easy to make, easy to change, easy to work in) and its loose pages. Although preparing pages for journaling with paint, ink, etc. is one of my favorite things to do, there is no prepping pages for the file journal. I simply stick my spray painted papers right in (after a little stitching, of course) and call them ready to go. Its first few pages have stayed the same, but I like to move the rest around depending on which sets of pages I'm working on or have completed. Once their 'done', I like to admire them for a while and then I don't really want to see them again (for a long while, anyway) and it bugs me to keep running into them.

  

 
 
These are a few of the pages in the front of the line for now. I'll tend to work among them first.

(Notice the Papaya! influence??) If I get stuck on a page, it will eventually get sifted to the back until inspiration strikes again. I've never worked in order or chronologically. I'd rather skip around working here and there as I feel inspired, so the loose pages are particularly nice there. And I love that I can stick them back under the sewing machine any time I want! 

You can see that starting with the spray painted papers gives these pages a completely different feel than Journal the First. They start off busier and way more colorful. I don't know if I'll always journal like this, but I'm seriously enjoying it at the moment. Here are some completed pages; some you've seen before, but to give you an idea where they fit in to the whole journal family....

 

 

 

  

Next up: Journal the Third, the adopted child....

a tale of 3 journals: journal the first

I'm finding myself working almost exclusively in one of three journals lately and thought it might be fun to introduce you to each of them, being the ladies I spend the most time with. I don't name my journals or title them, although now I'm thinking it would be helpful with this post if I did. I mostly think of them in terms of size and sometimes mood-- my mood. When I think to myself, I feel more like working in this one than that one, it is usually a random choice based on how I feel at that particular moment or, at most, simply a matter of feeling the need to work on a smaller or larger scale. Yet, each book is developing its own...not theme necessarily, but voice. Or more like its own way of speaking. But let me let them show you in their own way what we mean. Introducing (in no particular order)....

Journal the First

This little lady has been scantily clad for most of her life. It was only in the last week or so that I got my butt in gear and made her a new dress. Though she was always destined for better things, her bare bones come from a pad of watercolor paper cut in half, including its chipboard backing turned into the book's covers. Wanting the easy way out and a journal that opens flat, I opted for a coil binding which is ugly but easily disguised with a pretty fabric cover. 

The beauty of #1 is her simple uniform pages. No fuss and plenty of room for painting, ranting or anything in between. The thicker watercolor paper is perfect for all kinds of wet media and artistic abuse. My usual method is to paint backgrounds on a few pages at a time then work among them with collage, doodling and writing until they are more or less 'done' and I feel compelled to move on and paint a few more. I'll work like this until the journal is filled or I've outgrown it and feel the need to start fresh. I'm hoping this one will be the first journal I complete every page in. As much as I love each of my journals and recognize their importance at specific times in my life, there is nothing as depressing to me as an abandoned journal. Hopefully, as I grow as a journaler and an artist, I'll either get over caring about blank pages or learn to finish what I start.

 

Some sample pages:
 

 

Next up: journal the second, the black sheep of the family....

when giving and receiving are interchangeable

Looks like the first peeks at the Papaya! Art Challenge are starting to crop up. Just take a look.  I have to admit, I'm dying to see what everyone else puts together. I've always had a passion for artistically wrapped gifts. Heck, I love all gifts--giving and receiving--but gifts from artist friends who take the time to put that extra love into it, making the outside as beautiful as the inside, those are the ones that make me giddy like a school girl. You can bet there will be squealing involved.

My own gifts are well under way. I say gifts because I just couldn't narrow down the ideas to just one. I bet I'm not alone.  

journal therapy

We are fickle and we are fragile. I am especially talking about myself. This weekend I've been like a crazy woman. I hardly recognize myself, although crazy is nothing new around here. The stress of keeping the house spotless in case of a prospective buyer, waiting and worrying when and if is so much harder than I imagined. As I cleaned the house yesterday for a second viewing, I found myself so afraid I didn't even know what to hope for. On one hand I was terrified that the woman viewing the house would decide she didn't want it, but at the same time I was terrified that she would. There are so many details to foresee and prepare for and my little brain seems too small to even consider them all. I can't tell you what comfort I find in remembering that God knows so much better than I do what is best and what will make me happiest. Even what I think I want changes from minute to minute. I'm a total basket case.

Pouring it all out into my journal has been such a relief for me. Reshaping and making something beautiful out of the chaos in my head just seems to set everything in the world right side up again. And when I can work a little on an older page from a time when everything seemed to make more sense, I can forget about the craziness for a little while. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

papaya love

You knew I was going to be the first in line to sign up for Papaya!'s first creative challenge, didn't you? I haven't done anything like this in a very long time and, oh, it is so much more fun than I remember.

Designing used to come pretty easy for me. Whether it was for a rubber stamp company or scrapbooking magazine, I always enjoyed working with cool new (to me) products. I mean, who wouldn't? But the problem was that I became so busy making stuff for other people, I never had time or energy to create for myself. To pursue with abandon my own creative bunny trails rather than sticking to what was popular or what sells. That's always the dilemma isn't it? The real treat comes when you can find a company to work for who will give you the freedom to follow your own vision and compensate you for it. A dream come true. 
 
I admit that I was second guessing myself after signing up for this challenge, though. The sophistication of Papaya!'s  designs are way out of my league, but I figured, why not? And I'm so glad I took the chance. They were extremely generous in gifting their products which makes a world of difference, particularly to perfectionists like me who can't bear to take the scissors to something already so beautiful if it means even a slight chance of screwing things up beyond repair.

And, I mean, who wouldn't come up with something amazing when you have these scrumptious beauties as your starting point??

  
 
So off I go. I'm documenting the whole process in my art journal, of course, for fun and because they asked us to. Oh, yes. Lots of ideas are brewing in this little brain of mine. It feels a lot like being a kid at Christmas again, I must admit. 

writing the ending

 

I hadn't planned on being away from the blog so long. Everything is going faster than I imagined and I'm wondering if it is all about to come to a screeching halt. We've got our home on the market and had our first open house yesterday. It went well. Smells of freshly baked cookies and hot coffee didn't hurt--what else says 'home' more??

 

Next comes some early packing and a big fat garage sale this weekend. I woke up in the middle of the night dying to pack boxes and move all this crap out of my house and out of my life. The less stuff we have to move, the better off we'll be.

 

But I have to, have to, have tomake time for journaling. It is the one thing that will keep me sane and I want to document every step of this process so I can look back and remember all that God has done. 

 

It looks like journaling and maybe a bit of knitting will be all I can aspire to for a little while. The thought of cooler weather coming has reawakened the longing for yarn between my fingers. I still have projects from last Winter to finish up so we'll start there.

And surely I can squeeze in a little quality time with the paint cans?

 

its all in the details

 

~ Journal Details:

 

 
 
~ San Miguel details:

  

 

~ Life's details:

This week has been all about the details as we are getting our house ready to put on the market to sell: touching up paint, scrubbing baseboards, finishing abandoned projects, packing away clutter, aka, decor. It is so brutal to finally put up the molding or install a new light over the kitchen sink for someone else to enjoy, especially when I have put so much into the shaping and reshaping of my sanctuary, my canvas, my biggest art project yet. But the time has come for a greater change, and the best is yet to come, I'm convinced. This weekend while strangers walk through our home and gawk at the blue walls or admire the painted brick, we'll be far away from it all enjoying a friend's wedding in Austin. I love weddings, especially when they are for people I love. And it's October now so the heat has subsided a bit, we'll be looking for our new home soon, and will be spending at least one morning stuffing ourselves at Kerbey Lane. We have a lot to look forward to.