Speak Your Truth

For a not very observant new-Jew I sure spend a lot of time reflecting and creating art on Jewish themes. The City Shul is offering a meditation class which started this morning. After leading us through a couple of different meditations our teacher Elaine talked briefly about Jacob wrestling with the angel in this week's Parsha and then we were asked to meditate on a few questions. These questions asked us when and why we do or do not speak our truth.



I wrote these few words in my notebook as I came out of the guided meditation and then transferred them to my art journal this afternoon.

What does it mean to speak your truth?

Feeling?

Experience?

Insight?

Desire?

Expectation?

Requirement?

A gift from the soul that you share with those you care about = The entire world.

But what does that have to do with wrestling with the angel?

The Magen David in this image was an orphan block. I originally sewed some pieces of fabric together   to be part a baby quilt, and then it was going to be a kippah, and then it sat in my studio asking for a home and now it is gelled to a page of this journal and painted over and journalled around and has found a new life.


What I have discovered through meditation is that my truth is to be found in the pause between my breaths. A place without words.

Being the Change

Today my daughter and a couple of her cousins worked on an Art Journal honouring my husband's side of the family and all of its wonderful traditions.


Jewish holidays, Shabbat, birthdays and vacations are all enjoyed together. My husband's late Safta Mania loved to visit us from Israel because it was always a party!

The girls working together to create this project exemplifies the close family connections that we are helping to create with all of our celebrations and traditions.

My heart overflows every time my daughter comes to ask for permission to use another product or element in her journal. Not only has she seen me working on my journals and wants to emulate me, she is also being respectful of our materials, ephemera and workspace.

I am scheppin naches.

Altered Magazine

Today I took the first steps to making my first Altered Magazine.

I read somewhere recently that 8 magazine pages sewn together makes a good thickness for an Art Journal canvas. It seemed to me that a New Yorker would be just the right size for and Art Journal. I grabbed one from the bottom of our enormous stack we always have lying around. I've always hated to throw them out and now I know why.



Heading to the sewing machine I sewed the magazine together 8 or so pages at a time. This is a great way to practise machine quilting and random stitching and is a lot of fun.


Next I squeezed a dollop of white gesso on a couple of pages at a time and played with smooshing random dollops of coloured acrylics around the gessoed pages. These two pages I covered entirely with paint.


On these two pages I let the texture of the stitching and the words show through.

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day. These two blogs offer so much encouragement and inspiration. I hope you'll drop by and check out what some of the other bloggers are up to.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

A Peaceful Chapbook

First I made a little book.


Then I painted many of the pages.


Then I added words of prayer and meditation.





Then I drew a mandala.


This is my first mandala. Drawing it brought me so much joy and pleasure it surely won't be my last.

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Instructions for Making a Reversible Journal Cover

Much as I hate to reinvent the wheel, or talk in cliches, sometimes I need to put in the time and effort and solve a design challenge for myself.



I'm sure there are a dozen places on the net where I could find a pattern for making a reversible journal cover but the lovely site I found this morning did not provide the exact instructions I needed.


I threw out the version I made using Alexandra's instructions and then spent the rest of morning happily cutting and sewing and ripping and scribbling notes in my journal and now I know how to do it.


Let's see if I can explain:

You will need three different fabrics for this project. I used scraps from my (enormous) decorator fabric stash. The fabric you use for the flaps should coordinate with each of the other two fabrics.

Measure the width (W) and height (H) and thickness of the spine (S) of the book you want to cover.

I'll use the measurements of the book cover I made this morning as an example.

W 8.5
H 11.25
S 1.5

When cutting your fabric pieces you will need to add a seam allowance of half an inch to the width and 1.25 inches to the height.


1. Cut one piece the size of the entire outside cover plus seam allowance from each of your fabrics.

I cut my three pieces 19 x 12.5 in


2.  To make the flaps cut the piece from your coordinating fabric in half

I ended up with two pieces 9.5 X 12.5 in

3. Press the flap pieces in half along the shorter side WRONG sides together and press. Next time I make one of these covers I will top stitch along the folded edge.

4. Layer all of the fabric pieces.

i) first cover face up
ii) one flap on each end, folded sides towards the middle
iii) second cover face down

5. Secure the layers with pins

6. Take the pinned layers to the sewing machine and sew them all together using a scant quarter inch seam. Leave an unstitched section on one long edge to turn the cover right side out.

7. Cut the thread and clip the corners before turning.

8. Turn the cover right side out. Use a capped pen or the end of a pencil to push the corners out completely if necessary.

9. Top stitch the long edges between the flaps closing the hole you left open for turning.

10. Put your cover on your book and enjoy!

11. Reverse it and see how it looks the other way!

Next time around I will experiment with decorating, painting, embroidering or otherwise embellishing one side of the cover before I sew it all together.

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think. Please let me know if you make a cover and how it turned out.

Working in Black and White and Grey

The Black and White challenge this month for the Artist Journal Group at Bizzy B coincided nicely with the Fall Fearless and Fly challenge at Artists in Blogland. Anyone who knows me in real life or from this blog will know that I tend towards vibrant colours in my life and in my work.

I had fun trying out different brush strokes with black coloured gesso in this little hand made journal, but when I tackled the back cover colour snuck in.

I'm curious to see what wil happen when it is time to do the front cover and if I will need to add my usual blues and turquoises when I start journalling the inside pages.

My Life is not lived in Black & White or even 50 shades of Grey

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day and Fall Fearless and Fly.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

The Raging Storm

A few days ago I put some random brush strokes on a page and glued a strip of paper to the side. Today I picked up pencil and pens and let the brush strokes talk to me. A Poseidon-like creature formed in the upper left corner blowing wind and waves and rain to churn up everything else on the page. I journalled about how the weather and the election are conspiring to churn up my psyche.


A few days ago a storm raged along the Eastern United States leaving destruction in its wake. All we could do up here in Canada was stay glued to Twitter and CNN and hope for the best.


A presidential campaign is raging to the South of us now and we are hoping that it will not leave destruction in its wake too. All we can do up here in Canada is stay glued to Twitter and CNN and hope for the best.

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Home and Away

The kids are concerned that I'm painting and playing with paper and ephemera instead of with fabric and sewing. "Does that mean you're not a quilter anymore?" they ask.


I am still playing with pattern, texture, colour and imagination. Art Journal pages have layers just like quilts.

They can bring you comfort in a different way. This page uses pieces of paper reminding me of my family's home and travels.
A luggage tag and hotel business card from my father's trips for work and to visit my brother overseas, a ticket to a Broadway play that my husband and I remember with pleasure, and my membership card from the tennis club I belonged to in Venelles during my father's sabbatical in Aix en Provence.


A page from my mother's address book with jottings in her amazing spidery scrunched handwriting and a note card from our neighbourhood community centre reminds me to be proud of my roots.
A photograph of an old fashioned plane collaged on top reminds me to be grateful for my wings.

I tell the kids "Don't worry, I'm still a quilter". 

I'm a quilter, and a designer, and a singer, and a writer and an artist and a...

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.
Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Fanciful Faces

An Art Journal Page with torn paper, gesso, fabric scraps, negatives, a postcard, pencil drawings. I am slowly becoming more comfortable putting pencil or paper to pen and drawing either what I see in front of me or what I see in my imagination. This comes after a lifetime of telling myself "I can't draw. I'm not artistic."

I tell the children that our brain isn't smart enough to know if we're telling the truth or not. It'll believe whatever we tell it.

So I tell my brain "I am an Artist" and it is starting to believe me.

Linking to Creative Every Day, Art Journal Every Day and Paint Party Friday.
Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.