Breathe from your hoo-hoo...

Anyone see that episode of Ellen? It was years ago, but some things stick with you, you know? Anyway, here's a page I was playing with today in my June journal. I had some stuff I wanted to say but my idiot husband came home and now I can't really art because god forbid we have a conversation while we're both sitting on the couch with the TV on, but the INSTANT I get up to do something else he starts yapping.

The goal is to have this journal finished by the end of June...(and by "finished" I mean FULL, not just that I set it aside and start doing something else!) OH, and I do know that it's May 31, but I gave myself yesterday and today to work in it too, so I could start at the beginning of the week.

You Suck Monday 5/30/11

I really, really, REALLY want to paint on fabric and have fabric journals and make stuff with fabric. I quilt and I've made tons of costumes for plays and blah, blah, blah...but this was FUN...

I just laid down some stencils and sprizted some Rit dyes I made over them. I fucking LOVE it. Things went a bit awry after this because I wanted the colors to sort of bleed into the white parts (it's not really white, it's cream colored) so they weren't so STARK. I added a little too much water and everything went kinds cloudy. But I'm gonna do this AGAIN because I love it. And I'm getting fabric paints.

PLAY DATE!!!!

Kelly and I haven't had a play date in a million years (OK, a couple of months, but STILL).

Today we went to Wal-Mart and got these:

And these:

And made THESE!

We sprayed shit to test them out

And Kelly's hubby came home and caught us making a giant mess...

It was f-ing fun, I gotta tell ya. SO freaking fun. We spent about $25 total and made twelve 2oz bottles and had enough to make at least one more of each color. So, I have one glimmer mist and one chalkboard spray and they were $6 each. This is SO much cheaper and the colors came out AWESOME. Freaking awesome, people.

You Suck Monday

WOW, this was a good one. I mean a sucky one. I have an idea in my head, I swear. it's a little hard to explain it...

Here's the "head"...

I rolled it out with a wine bottle like I do with cookie dough (yeah, yeah, buy a rolling pin):

Head on a skewer, "body" ready for clay wrapping...

The red one was REALLY HARD to knead (and I have nerve damage in my right hand so it took FOREVER). I smashed me text stamp into it to give it a pretty cool texture, then wrapped it around the foil shape.

WTF, right? Why was I thinking it would smooth out with the clay on it?? I threw it out, all of it. I apparently can't use "real" clay. I'm going to try it again with paper clay...

June Journal

Just getting my June journal all set up and ready for action! I swear to you, my beloved followers, I'm going to carry this sucker everywhere and jot all my scribbles down in it and doodle and draw and all that junk. I want it to be my "everything" journal. For one month. Then I wanna move on to a new one. I was journaling every day fora few months, and it really makes me happy when I do it. Then one day I don't do it because I'm PMSing or I'm mad because I don't WANNA journal today and you can't MAKE ME (yes, that's an argument I have with myself) or I go out with my friends and I don't want to bring it along and have them make comments about it and THEN I'm out of the habit, just like that. I don't have an addictive personality AT ALL, so if I skip one day it's really easy to skip a week, then a month, and so on. BUT I'm not going to do that for the month of June, all right? That's not SO big of a commitment. 30 days to use this sucker up.

Here's the inside. This page folds out and is attached to the cover with masking tape:

Page 2:

Page 3:

This is what's on the other side of the taped in page:

Nothing exciting, yet. Maybe it'll be a boring month, who knows? But the word for June is Balance. It was supposed to be my word for 2011, but I've been sucking at it so far. Anyone else need a little balance in their lives? Grab a journal and play along...

SHOCKING!!

I made another journal! AND I didn't get taken away in the Rapture. Bummer, huh? So, this is Stonehenge printmaking paper recommended by Samantha Kira. She might be ON to something here. I like this paper. Initially it doesn't feel as smooth and creamy as the Fabriano Artistico (I just like saying it, OK?) but it took a LOT of abuse. You have no idea how many layers of crap that is.

I'm hoping to make this June's planner AND journal. All in one. Finished in one month. Think I can do it? We'll see...

Last day of school...

Tomorrow is Min's last day of preschool! (OK, not his LAST DAY because this was a 3-year-old class and next year he'll go to a 4-year-old class, but still.) I made this for his teacher :)

Actually, someone else made the front, and I have no idea who, sorry about that - I don't like not giving credit where it's due. It's digital, of course.

And I took this picture of Mini and his teacher yesterday at "graduation".

He wrote his own name down there, which is pretty good because they're not learning to write in school yet - he just figured it out.

Missing Mermaid!

My friend Tal was asking where the mermaid has been lately. Don't worry, I haven't gotten busy and forgotten about you guys or been too Indigo to post. I'm just having this problem with my EYES!

GROSS, right?!? It started in my left eye and was ouchy for a couple of days. Then gone. Then I started work and Liam started day care and it happened in HIS eye. I figured it was allergies, got some drops, then it went away and he's completely fine. Then I got it in BOTH eyes. I'm still thinking it may be allergy related because I lived in Florida for 20 years and there are no seasons there. So there's not a time when a lot of things are blooming, and there's not a time where a lot of things die off. (That's why there are so many bugs, they don't die in the winter because there is no winter.) So I got Zyrtec and when my eyes seemed better I put my contacts back in - oops. I went to the eye doctor today (at Target) and he gave me a prescription and said to come back Saturday. Now if only the sore throat and the stuffy nose would go away...

You Suck Monday!

Un-oh, I didn't post yesterday - I suck!! :) Ajae and I sucked together yesterday (skype is a wonderful invention) and here is what I did:

I stuffed my box with three grocery bags, but I think it could have used another!

Masking tape to close it up!

I hate gesso, so this is just a little white paint, sloppily applied.

I suck again because I forgot to take pics of the next two layers! First I used a light yellow, then a teal, and then because every project should have a little, quinacridone magenta. Then I used a big stamp to just sort of add a lil something - it's HARD to stamp on a box.

Then I used a toothbrush to add some speckles...

Got a few on my brand new netbook...

AND my crackers...

And that's where it is right now. I'm not sure what I'm going to add. I was thinking of using my Suzi stamp (stamping her, coloring, and putting her on with Pop Dots so she stood out a little) but the stamp is twice the size of the box!! So, we'll see where it goes, if anywhere.

Meetups?

How come there aren't any art meet-ups in Minneapolis?? It's an artsy kind of place. What do you think the odds are of me talking Kelly into starting one with me? An art journaling group, or a mixed media group or something. Wouldn't it be fun to get together with other people and fling paint? I'll see what she says...

Friendship....

Remember when you were young, and your friends were people that you climbed all over on the playground? And then you got a little older and they were the people you swapped half a sandwich with at lunch. And then in high school, they were the ones you told all the things you'd NEVER tell your parents. Did you know that less than one percent of people remain friends with the people they were friends with in high school? I vowed to NOT be one of those people, and I'm not. My best friends now are my best friends from then. I don't make friends easily, so I wonder if that's why? Tami is my best friend. We've been friends for a million years, were band geeks together, and have a billion or so stories. She likes movies and southern food, and I like bagels with cream cheese and can barely sit still long enough for a half-hour sitcom. I dropped out of college and she was recruited by the Haringey Council in London to work for them. We like a lot of the same things, but I'm chocolate and she's vanilla. I don't agree with the statement "opposites attract" but I wonder if we would be friends if we met today? I didn't realize that a lot of people don't have friends like Tami. Not everyone sits around in the their pj's together. Not everyone HAS someone they could call at three o'clock in the morning. (That's her, for the record. She sometimes forgets there's a time difference.) Not everyone has someone to tell their secrets to, someone they don't wear makeup in front of (OK, you know I don't wear makeup at all, but you know what I mean). I don't clean before my friends come over. I don't change out of my Dr. Seuss pants. I do make sure there are fresh batteries for the Wii controllers, though. Priorities. She's the one who brought all this up yesterday. Her fiance is feeling sad because he's from Ireland and he feels like none of his friends keep in touch, while Tami and I talk every day. It made me sad for him and grateful for my peeps. I don't have a ton of friends, only about five. But they're keepers, every single one of them.

I made this LO awhile ago, with a kit called "Spring Fling" by MamaLlamaLisaDeigns.

May Collaboration Challenge

So, here's the challenge: get the May Collab kit, create a layout and post it in the challenge thread, and you could win the NEXT collab Free!

I LOVE collabs because they're so huge and awesome. This one is theoretically for parties, but if you go back a few posts, you can see my LOs and I used them to scrap ordinary everyday pictures in a fun way. Something else that's awesome about Ahhh Scrap's monthly collabs is that they're SUPER reasonably priced. This one is only $5.99 for ALL that stuff! I love it and you will, too! Come play with me at Ahhh Scrap's forum and see...

Time for a new attitude

I'm tried of feeling useless and purposeless and like I'm just drifting through life. It's my life. It's what I make of it. I wanna make something different.

Grandma...

She's in the hospital with pneumonia. She's 89. That's us on my 27th birthday (2007). I'm relatively sure she's going to be OK, even though she kind of doesn't want to. My grandpa died in 2008 and my uncle in 2010, and grandma just wants to go be with them...

Selfishly, I want her to live forever.

Journeys vs Destinations

I gotta tell you, I am NOT someone who enjoys the journey. Don't get me wrong, I like a nice airport waiting area as much as the next person and I LOVE to fly. But I don't do "road trips". I HATE driving. I'm not someone who just "enjoys the process" of things. I'm so tired of hearing people say "Don't worry about the outcome, it's the process that's important." So if I spend ten thousand hours sketching and erasing to make a halfway decent face and then destroy it when I try adding color I'm not even allowed to be upset? If I get up to pee and my kid knocks his paint water over and my journal gets soaked, I shouldn't care because the end results don't matter? What kind of LOGIC is that?

Last night I sat at this POS computer for hours trying to make a flyer and it just didn't LOOK right. When I finally got it to something halfway decent, it wouldn't upload to Staples like I needed it to. But I shouldn't care because the process of working on it was the most important part. According to lots of people. The thing is, the people who say things like that don't usually mean it. They're just spouting out what they SHOULD say to people who want to HEAR things like that. I'm not buying it! Not for one penny. Life is not a journey. We have journeys in life, but life itself? I don't believe it's a road leading to anywhere but death. Sorry. You can think I'll burn along with Osama Bin Laden in some firey pit with the devil laughing as we roast, but I don't agree. I think this is ALL we have. It IS the destination, we've arrived - now it's time to party.

On that note, here are some pretty angels I painted. :) I'm trying to remember if I've already posted them for you, but I don't think so.

Morning blogging!!

Look at me, blogging in the morning before work! It's only 7:32 am and I am NOT a morning person, but I really like how the purple pen girl turned out! I realize she's not gorgeous or anything, but remember she's just a doodle on a piece of notebook paper! I added some paint to her - the expensive ones because they make me happy.

That's my week! It needs more doodles, I know. I didn't bring it to work yesterday when I TOTALLY needed it, so I'm bringing it today! The people I work with are ALWAYS taking ten minutes to read the paper, go have a smoke, get coffee, etc. If they can do that, I can jot down my ideas in my journal.

Pretty Purple Pen Girl...

She's on this week's "home" page of my CTJ (that's Cheap Thoughts Journal for anyone not paying attention, and it's a composition notebook from Wal-Mart). I'm NOT a good doodler. Really not. I want to be, though! The only thing I actually know how to draw is girls! Petit Dolls and Goddesses, learned everything I know from Suzi Blu. So I doodled a girl. With my purple pen. From one of those 4-color clicky pens.

I maybe went a little too far here...

But then I lightened her a little with some white paint. The boss (that's Suzi) said to use a thin layer of gesso, but my gesso is super thick, like spackle. (According to spell check "spackle" isn't a word. Who knew?)

Anyway, I'm happy with her. Especially because she's not "fine art". She's just a doodle in my CTJ and she's awesome. I'm going to add color to her (and the rest of the page!!) so maybe you'll see her again. Maybe not, because I usually just show you half-finished stuff!

You Suck Monday

Here is today's YSM project:

I know what you're thinking. "So what? It's just another journal. Everyone makes those."

Well, this was my first time using coptic stitch on the covers. Usually I just bind the paper block together and then I make the covers and glue the block to the covers. And to make sure I have enough thread, I measure the length of the book times how many signatures plus one. So since THIS book is five sigs, I measured six lengths of thread. (OK, the first time I only measured two lengths, but I realized I was an idiot BEFORE I started and cut a new piece of thread.) So, five sigs, six lengths of thread - that sounded right to me. The problem? I had to sew the COVERS, too! So I'm sewing on the back cover and I realize it's not going to be enough thread. I decide to just ADD some thread and I tie on another piece. Square knot, of course, everyone's always talking about how strong square knots are. The first time I tug the string, the knot comes apart. Now I have to pull the thread back a few stitches and re-tie it. It worked that time, but still, who's the idiot who's bound a million journals and still can't manage to do it right? Me. That's right people. You Suck Monday.

I've been trying to decide what to do about our new blog, but I guess for now I'm just going to double-post. I'm not smart enough to come up with two blog posts in one day!

A different type of journaling...

I've been working in this composition notebook for three weeks. It cost eighty-five cents at Wal-Mart. I've used all kinds of paints, inks, pens, pencil, stencils, pretty much anything I can think of. I've been cutting things out of trash and magazines. Words, silly pictures. Printing pictures from my phone. I stick them in with a tape runner.
This is a spread I was playing with - watercolors and a picture of Mini Me in a bubble at the playground. I LOVE it. Under the watercolors is some stars I sprayed with glimmer mist, and some white acrylic to give the page a little more strength. Today while I was playing, I was trying to figure out WHY it is that this journal is so much fun? (Kelly's been calling it the Cheap Thoughts Journal, so we'll refer to is as CTJ from now on.) I mean, I love my Frabriano journals. My Arches journal. I love nice, smooth, thick watercolor paper. But I think the reason the CTJ is SO freeing is there are no expectaions. First of all, I never call my journals "art journals". That's too much pressure. I use "art journal" as a blog label so it shows up if someone does a search, but if I'm talking about it or looking for it, I just call it my journal. But still - if I've paid $17.95 for a Moleskine, or $15 for paper and spent and hour cutting and binding, can I just slap paint around in it? I kind of do...but not like this. I've NEVER picked up a pen to draw with before. Not ever. And I've never really layeres before. I mean, a couple of layers of acrylics and stamps, maybe a litle collage, but this feels different. Like broadening my horizons with a cheap notebook and a pen with four colors.

May Collab!

It's technically only been May for three minutes, BUT...This month's collab is an AMAZINGLY fun birthday kit. I love everything about it - how GREAT are those colors?!? I know, awesome stuff! Now, I didn't actually scrap any birthday pictures. Most of the pictures I take are just completely random. I have thousands of pics of just everyday stuff. The one at the top is just us at the park, and the bottom ones are Mini in a tie and Wonder Pets pj's. Gotta love it!