This Week's Stuff

I haven't done that much Art Journaling this week. Instead I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos and recognized that one of the reasons I get stuck is that everyone else out there has stuff I don't have. Not art supplies so much at this point. Over the last 6 months or so I've bought a bunch of art supplies. But things like the elements I had when I was digital scrapbooking and the embellishments everyone seems to have. Some of that "stuff" is bought, but a lot of it gets made by the artists out there.

And that is what I've been up to. I bought the Silhouette and I've been cutting stencils, but also I've begun to cut various die cuts that I can turn into the stuff I've been missing. I've bought a couple of fashion magazines because although I'm not likely to make layouts out of fashion pictures, I just might. And there is other stuff to cut out of the magazines. like words and phrases, and small pictures, and even squares of colorful images that you won't be able to tell came from a magazine. I might just be doing some of that on the Silhouette. Not sure how it will react to magazine pages as paper, but we will see.

I've just gotten a new book that is sending me off on even more of this making it stuff. For example I have an old vintage book that I bought because it was a favorite childhood craft book. I think it is older than I am. It was all about making costume dolls out of paper mache. I'm not likely to ever make the dolls. My attempts at age 12 were pretty awful, but I just loved the book. It has illustrations of the dolls. I'm going to be copying the drawings, and I might even color some of them and use both the plain ones and the colored ones as collage sheets. The art journaling book has multiple ideas on how to make collage sheets, and using drawings like the ones in the doll making book are just one of them.

Another thing the author suggests is copying one's own art to make collage sheets. And I've got two collages that do not have words on them at this point (but will soon) that I'm going to do that with.

A collage sheet is something that one makes so one can cut it up and make new art out of it. At this point it is another thing I don't have, but will have soon. I've also got a lot of stuff on my computer from the digital scrapbooking days that I've begun to catalog. Some of that also needs to be turned into things I can use.

I do have a couple of pictures for you to see. 

 It is ICAD season. In June and July, every year, the Art Journaling community does little pieces of art on index cards. At this point I've done at least one every day. I did two only once so far. I've learned a lot. The early ones were nothing to write home to mother about. The newer ones have been much better. I've got things I printed and cut using the Silhouette on a couple of the newer ones.

And on the newest one, the one with the 35 on it, I've got a hand made flower embellishment.

There has been a sudden craze in some of the groups I've been following on Facebook for hand cut and decorated flowers. So far I've only decorated a few, but here is a stack of flowers cut out of book pages and Gelli prints waiting for their turn with the markers.

This also has been part of my element/embellishment journey.

The messy drop paper in my art area is on purpose. Pretty soon it will get to the point where I will turn it into an intentional painted and collaged paper. Which I will use to make more embellishments and elements. More circles. More squares and more flowers.

Take care all.