Art Journaling is something I've been dabbling in for years. It can be a great place to try out new techniques, to work out and document design ideas and to vent about your day to day life. Lately I've been trying to teach myself more about how the pros do it. Today I've been watching  some of Teesha Moore's videos. I discovered Teesha just this morning through this post in my new bloggy friend AJ's blog AJ's Art Journaling. Looking for inspiration I had to visit my bloggy friend Carolyn's page a few times, and so should you. Her work is beautiful and her generosity in visiting all her friends' sites and leaving encouraging comments on their work is so much appreciated.


So this is what I was drawn to create when I opened my journal. I attempted to use some of the ideas I had gleaned today. The writing mirrors the process I used. Make a Page 1) Paint a background 2) Add collage elements 3)Journal 4)Doodle 5)Ponder 6)Add more stuff... 7)Stop

I particularly love this bowl which I clipped from a spread in a shelter magazine. I seem to always have to add that shot of Aqua. No wonder one of my Pinterest boards is titled  Turquoise, Teal, Aqua.



Going with my vow to use what I have on hand I drew my own version of the bowl all over the page using a Sakura Permapaque fabric marker. I wonder well fabric marker will last on paper?

I'm linking this post to Fall Fearless and Fly as the journal page uses warm colours and further investigates my goal of making art every day.

Stuffed Shirts

You'll never hear me complain about having my husband underfoot. I dread the day his business gets too big to run from his home office. Our days are spent working quietly in our own spaces, coming together periodically to walk the dog, cook a meal together, edit and comment upon each other's work.

Source: countryliving.com via Mitzi on Pinterest

These dress shirt pillows from Country Living are just so cute I had to try making my own. Fortunately my husband works at home and isn't too attached to all those dress shirt he used to have to wear every day so I grabbed one out of the Goodwill bag to experiment on.

I thought I was making the pillow for the couch in his home office, so I left the pocket on in case I ever wanted to tuck a love note for him into it. 

Ever the Soccer fan when I had finished the pillow I found him in the Family Room with his Dad and the kids trying to find El Classico on TV.  Ever the Techy as soon as he saw the pocket on the pillow he stuck the TV and Apple TV convertors in the pocket.  Ever the Entrepreneur he wanted me to jump in the car to Goodwill, buy all the dress shirts and start up production.  Watch for these pillow covers in my Etsy store some time soon!  Disclaimer: The photograph at the top of this post is from Country Living by way of Pinterest. Learning to photograph my work is on my to do list.

Obscured Handwriting

Not everything needs to be colourful and sometimes our private thoughts are best left unread.

My Obscured Handwriting Series celebrates the old, the unwanted, the faded and the illegible.

Obscuring my journaling by writing over it in many directions I get the thoughts out of my head and onto a scrap of an old bed sheet, making a textured fabric I can use in my artwork.

The black writing from today's journaling bled through the tattered fabric making interesting lines and dots on the back which I followed with a grid-like quilting stitch in grey. The ends of the quilting threads, the backing and the batting are all left visible.

The backing is also fabric torn from a discarded sheet.

Working With Warmth

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." Abraham Lincoln

For the Artists in Blogland Fall Fearless and Fly Challenge participants were encouraged to work with warm colours, to envision our dream for the future, and to ponder these words of Abe Lincoln.

A gorgeous pink silk swatch from a designer friend sandwiched over one of my torn pieces of sheet and a scrap of batting formed the basis for this little quilt. I reached into my grab bag of tiny strips - the ones you get when you cut fat quarters or square up edges and pulled out pinks reds and oranges at random and started to play with colour and texture. As each strip of fabric was laid on the little quilt I started following the twisting and turning line it made with a zigzag quilting stitch. Suddenly aqua asked to be added to the mix and I added a few aqua strips.

Turning the quilt over I traced around the bottom of my water glass, adding some random circles to cut out and darn back into the quilt. I added radiating points around one of the circles with variegated thread, spirals running in and out of some of the circles, a stitched frame and the piece was ready to trim and photograph.






I love the back of this quilt. The texture of the different types of quilt stitch and the lines where I drew and cut the circles have their own sort of beauty.


My dream for my future includes a body of work that I have created and that I can look back on with pride. It will not magically appear. It needs to be worked on day after day. One stitch at a time. One idea at a time.

There will be missteps and days that I may not have anything to show for my efforts. There will be days when I stare at the wall, play on the computer or walk the dog instead of getting anything done.

There will be days when I walk into a room and see something that I have made myself, with my own two hands and my imagination, and I will smile.

WIP for charity

What to do with this gorgeous mess?







Fabrics, blocks, pinned on mismatched borders all moldering away in a bag in a cupboard for years.






It's time to get this baby finished and on some lucky baby's bed.

1. Unpin it, press it, throw all the pieces up on the design wall and decide what to do.

2. Get'er done.

Or - make notes about what I've done so far, put it all in a bag and return it to my LQG charity quilting group.

Done!

I hope I'll be able to post a picture one day of the fabulous job some industrious and creative quilter has done in getting this quilt finished and given away. As I've said before:

It's more important to be finished than fabulous.

Playing with Instagram

This morning as I shared a midmorning coffee with Eyal my eye drifted around the back patio of one of our favorite cafes. We had the place to ourselves. I jumped up from the table several times to take a quick photo of some of the artfully decaying items Ezra has used to decorate his space. I was particularly enchanted by the way the light filtered through the summer leaves, giving everything a greenish tint.

Paint peeling off of an old half door

A photo of this door's 'better half' is on Eyal's Instagram @markzohar. I'll retrieve it one of these days.

The view of the patio through a rusting wrought iron patio chair

A rusty pipe

These photos, which glowed so artfully on my iPhone and in my mind's eye have lost some of the clarity that I thought they had now that I see them on the big screen.

No matter.

The memory of the latte, the blueberry muffin and the warm dappled green summer shade that I shared with my sweetheart on the back patio of Ezra's Pound remain crystal clear.

What do I blog about?

I was recently contacted by a company that matches brands with bloggers. A number of bloggers I follow write very entertaining product and book reviews and it's a service I've been wanting to add to my blog so I was pleased to go to their site to fill out a "two minute" application. The two minutes dragged into what seemed like two hours as I attempted to retrieve all the information they requested, the URLs for my entire web presence and my PayPal account.

The question that made me think the hardest was "What do you blog about?"

 Well, faithful readers will know that I blog about whatever catches my fancy. This is not so helpful when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and for Social Media Chimps to match me with prospective brands but it makes it fun for me. I am able to document my interests and my creative projects as they arise and move on to the next thing.

The Five Topics I chose to identify today would probably have been different a week ago and will likely change in a week, or a month or a year. If I remember correctly I said that I blog about Quilting, Singing, Homemaking, Vegan and ...

What was the Fifth Topic? Family? Crafts? Judaism? Organizing? Social Media? Health? Yoga? Community?

It could have been any of the above and I honestly don't remember which one I chose. Maybe they'll let me submit another form with another Five Topics? Maybe I'll start writing a whole bunch of specialized blogs. I'm sure that would be a better way of attracting readers, advertisers and brand sponsorship but I don't think it would properly represent the quilt that is my life.

Source: cityshul.com via Mitzi on Pinterest

My personality, my life and my interests are like the patches of a quilt. They are of all different colours and textures, shapes and sizes, acquired over the years, sewn together to make something more than the sum of their parts. The quilting is formed by my daily experiences. All the running around, the quiet contemplation and the interaction with my friends and family go into the making of this quilt. It's a utility quilt that's made to be used, and laundered, stepped on and cuddled. Take a part out and it will unravel, returning to nothing but a heap of scraps.

So for now I will continue to explore the disparate threads that make up my life and continue to trust that readers will find me if my words touch a chord.

If you do drop by I would love to hear from you about anything that I write about or anything that you feel makes you who you are.