Ok, the new computer is up and running

The new computer is up and running. I've been able to do email since Monday. Yesterday I got my camera set up to attach to the computer so I can move photos from it to the computer for storage, and also so I can put them online at my blog and also on Facebook. So here I am.

I haven't done much art during the last week. I can manage to do a few things every day, but energy levels aren't up to doing massive amounts of stuff at one time, so I'm doing one or two computer things a day now that the basics are up, and I'm just waiting on the rest until I actually need them. Still I decided to keep doing a face a day and some doodles every day. The face a day thing really worked to make my faces look better and I figured the doodles would work out similarly.

 So here is the most recent face. I've never done one on book pages before and it is also the first face that I've ever colored with oil pastels. These are water soluble, but I didn't activate them. I just left them as they were. I'll need to use a fixative on the page to set them so they don't just smudge off.

I am rather happy with it.

The doodling is something else I've been doing. I discovered that I did not know how to doodle. I was never the kid who doodled on their pages during class. I think kids start doing that in Jr. High, and the school I was in would have had fits if any of us had done that. So I never did it.

I also did not doodle during phone calls. So I have had to literally learn how. One of my new realizations is that free motion quilting is just doodling with thread using a sewing machine, and, of course, I did have a hard time getting comfortable with that as well.

So it occurs to me that when I go back to quilting, learning how to doodle with a pen should help me with the free motion quilting as well.

And I own books full of free motion quilting designs, so looking through those ought to help me discover my own style of doodling.

Take care all.

Why I'm not blogging

About a week ago my main computer died, extremely suddenly. It was 4 years old, and worked perfectly until its last day. The hard drive had been racing for several weeks, and I'm pretty sure that is what killed it. I'm currently on an old laptop I bought the last time a desktop died and I knew I'd be without a computer for a month. This laptop is not only 4 years old, it was the cheapest laptop I could buy, and it is the slowest computer I've ever had to deal with. But it is still with me which is why I can write this blog post.

What I can't do is get photos from my camera to the computer. All of its USB ports are engaged.

I'll get the new computer which will be a laptop this time, but one that isn't the bottom of the barrel and isn't 4 years old. I bought a Windows 7 Pro laptop online from HP. You can't get new Windows 7 computers from the big box stores but you can from the manufacturer's website. I had such good luck with the old computer I decided to buy the same brand again.

And with any luck, you will hear from me in less than two weeks, with photos of what I've been up to. I've been playing with my paints and my art journals, and as usual I've been learning all kinds of new things that I would love to share.

Sorry it has been so long

It is getting harder and harder for me to blog. I'm not sure why, but I think I'm using my energy to actually do Art Journaling and taking classes in it, and I don't tend to have enough energy left to write about what I am doing. Not sure where this is going to go, but I do have an update.

I did make a cover for the Altered Backgrounds journal that I used for the class I was taking at the Art Geek's site. This is the front cover. I never got the beads on the long strings but I still hope to do that.

And here are my 7 favorite ICADs. I finished them on time. I was actually a day or two ahead during the last couple of weeks because I kept making a second card or even a third on some days. Once I got started I could not stop. One of the cards is the second or third I made but most of these were done later in the process as I got a better handle on how to do an ICAD.

And yes, I do miss them. There are two other regular small projects that are out there. One is to use Rolodex cards. And a second is to make a box to hold slightly larger cards and to do those. Neither is a Summer only project and neither expects you to do them every day for a specific period although a few people are doing them daily or almost daily. I have index cards that are way too big for the ICAD project and I am considering using those because I have so many of them.

 The next three layouts are rather odd, because each of them was made using either a loose sheet or in a separate book.

I've never done a loose sheet Art Journal layout before. I probably should have done this one in one of my commercial Art Journals, but it was possible that it was going to be one of several. This was for a challenge on the Jennibellie ning site. The idea was to do something you wanted to attract into your life, and I took something that is already there that I want to keep in my life.

I really am Just plain Happy to be creating every day, and I want that to continue.

I did I Choose to be Happy in my smaller Strathmore Visual Journal which has 140 pound Watercolor paper and is a joy to work in, but for some reason I am more interested in making my own journals right now. Still, from time to time I come back to this one and to the larger one.

I really do CHOOSE to be happy. It was something I learned you can do back when I was taking care of Joe at home. I could have sunk into depression during that last year, but I found several books on how to be happy, anyway, just because you choose to find things in your life to be grateful for or to enjoy. You can allow joy into your life even when things are bad, or you can sink into it. It really is a choice.

 A 4 page booklet arrived as part of my junk mail a week or so ago. It turned out that it wasn't even stapled together, but just held together with glue. I taped it together and I ended up with a little journal. I was experimenting because all of the others I had made so far, either from booklets of some sort, or with sewn signatures like the Altered Backgrounds Journal, had gesso on the pages. I only used paint on this one and then collaged some stuff onto the various pages. I'm going to try and paint flowers on the pages. This is my first attempt at a flower, and I'm reasonably happy with it.

 Most of my time during the last two weeks has involved taking classes over at the Art Geek's site. One of the classes is the August Obsessions class where we are making a journal out of single sheets of cardstock. Other people in the class are using file folders but my paper cutter is a very old one, and it would not cut file folders, so I ended up using card stock instead.

This is what the two sides of my new journal look like front and backs of all the sheets just put into a pile. They already look different since I've added another layer to them, but since I will be adding two more to them this weekend I didn't update the photos.

It is going to be interesting to see how the binding method will go, but I'm not ready to try that out yet. We will see what we will see.

 I am also taking the Eclectic Journal class at the same time. I already had a journal made out of a church magazine. This class is about either using a magazine or a book and altering it in ways that are different from using gesso or paint. I had one spread and the cover from my old magazine journal so I decided to try the new system on that.

I could only use the full system on the back cover since everything else had some gesso on it. The front cover does have a partial new system on it. All I can say is that I've become a believer because this is the easiest thing I've ever done with making my own journal.

 The photo above is the front cover. The one to the side is the back cover. The idea, also from the class is to use your own previous journal pages to produce things you can use in your new journals. The girl on the front cover is a copy of one of my two painted girls. I got to do some additional pen work on the copy, and I think she looks even better than the original did. I cut her out and pasted her on the cover and put a boarder of a painted paper of my own around the page. I added a fussy cut flower spray as well. The background is painted book pages and a painted paper that I had made quite a while ago.

I used one of the techniques from the Altered backgrounds class when I made up the back cover. I also recycled both the bird and the bird stamp from a previous layout. Using elements from my own art was interesting mainly because there isn't all that much of it yet. I've only been doing art journaling for a few months. But no question that I'm going to be making copies and scanning a lot of what I will be doing in the future so I can use parts of it again. Looks like Photoshop is going to get a workout.

And finally here is the last spread in that journal as well. Like every other thing I did in it this is experimental in some way. I used a dyed paper towel at one end, and washi tape. I doodled and I put some collage on the page but did not cover the entire thing. The hearts were from a deli print I had doodled on. I'm pretty happy with it overall.

So that is what I've been up to. Take care all.

Catching Up

I went back to see what I had shown all of you and what I hadn't. Boy do I need to catch up! Some of this stuff goes back several weeks. I'm still doing ICADs, but I won't show any of those this time. The season is almost over and I'll be doing a post about the ones I like the most when it is over.

The Studio isn't quite set up yet. I've got more organizational stuff in, but I'm taking it all one day at a time. If I get to something that is an unholy mess, I deal with it, and then go back to playing. In the long run that will mean I remember where I put things, and it never becomes a miserable job on any one particular day.

For example, I got some new stencils in and it hit the "overwhelm" button, so last night I started using the page protectors I'd bought over a month ago and got the ones that didn't have a home settled into page protectors and the container I'd bought for them. I didn't go into the stencils that do have a home, but those will get moved into page protectors too, and possibly into a 3 ring binder at some point, but not quite right now. I know where everything is, and nothing is so jumbled up that stencils are getting torn.

On to art journaling!

 The first two layouts were ones where I knew I wasn't quite finished. They are both from my experiments journal. In both cases I knew I needed words to finish them.

I think the letters I used in this one were too small. I'm still learning how to use letters I buy and put down, and I've got these tiny ones, and the huge ones below, in black.

I know I need to buy something in between. I think larger letters would have made me happier.

The 2 inch letters were the right choice for this layout. It actually does take courage to create things. This background has collage, as does the other one, and paint and stamping, and who knows what else. It is literally a hot mess, but those bold black letters do seem to have pulled it all together.

It makes me happy.


There is only one spread left in the experiments journal. I think I know what is going into that last spread. And then I will have to work on the cover.

 In addition to the experiments journal, I've been working in this hand made journal (my first) for a class I'm taking at Gulfsprite's site. I've jointed Art Geeks there, but that won't actually start until August. There is a free class with 9 or 10 videos, and I've been taking the class and treating it as a real class with homework.

This was the first page. On this one I used various kinds of dimensional media to create texture on book text and crumpled up scrapbook paper. I'd seen loads of videos on doing this kind of thing but watching and doing are two different things.

Once the dimensional media had dried, I painted over it. Each of the different media took the paint differently, and you can actually see that in this background.

All of the spreads in this journal are now backgrounds, not completed pages.

The second class involved using a photo from a magazine, and scrapbook paper, and other papers that were painted, to fit with the colors in the photo. I also cut the paper, which also altered it from what it was originally. I lucked out because that week's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY had this great two page photo in it that worked extremely well in this background. Actually, except for journaling and a title, this page is a finished page.

This is the third page in the class. This time we were putting the paper on horizontally. The idea was to cut out petals and use both the petals and the cut out, and to use the papers both painted and unpainted along with some paint and some painted book pages.

Like the first page this is almost an exact replica of the one done in the class, and once again I like how it came out.

 More paint, more cut up scrapbook and other papers. I also got to use two flowers I had painted on a painted paper project I did months ago on this page and I love how all of it came out.

 This class was about using just black and white and multiple scrapbook paper (with a little music paper). I only had one washi tape that was black and white and it is in there too.

 Something simple and elegant. Some doodle flowers from scrapbook paper, a little paint that is just scrubbed on and some lnesdone with a marker.

 In this case I didn't have the materials to do the actual class project, so I used what I had. I cut out a vintage photo, probably of an actress from the 19th or early 20th Century. I stamped on tissue paper with brown ink and painted a gold patterned tissue paper and music paper with brown paint.

I would never have done a background this way before this class, so obviously I have learned a lot.

And finally the unfinished cover of this little handmade journal. There is one more class that I haven't done anything for. There was one class where I decided to do an ICAD instead of a spread, and it is one of my favorite ICADs. I knew I didn't have enough pages to do every class in the journal. But I can make the covers out of the project for the final class, and then, I'm going to put some beads on the strings I left long so I could decorate them.

This isn't just my first home made journal. It is also my first finished journal. The commercial ones have lots of pages to go, and that is fine. I like working in multiple journals. There is also a journal made out of gelli prints that has reached its half way point. I'll talk about that one in another post.

Take care all.

What I've Learned From Doing ICADs

If you had asked me in May if I was capable of doing a tiny piece of art every day for two months I probably would have told you no. I have a hard time committing to anything long term. Or at least I thought so. But here I am on the 46th day of ICAD season and I've got 48 index cards with paint on them.

So one of the things I've learned is that I can commit. I have 48 cards because I mus-numbered one of the cards and decided to make a second one for the official number of that day, and because one day I just could not stop at just one.

One of the things I was committing to was making a single card every day, and for the most part that is what I've done. I've made at least one EVERY DAY.

 So this is the pile I showed a while ago. You can see how many cards there actually are although you can't see most of them well.










And this is a photo of the last 8 days.

I've learned a lot from doing the cards and not just about commitment. I've tried new techniques. I've used supplies I have never used before. I made cut outs using my electronic cutter, and cut things freehand, and stamped and painted and fussy cut things out from the Internet and magazines. I already know that I'm going to be trying out a couple new techniques I've never done before or that I've only done on Art Journal pages while I was taking a class.

Index cards are cheap. If your experiment doesn't work out you haven't spent a lot of money. You can try something new. You can see something someone else has done on YouTube or on the Internet, and try it out for yourself. 

My only problem is that I am going to miss them when July is over. Only 14 more days. I could just keep doing them, but I think there is a reason not to do that. Not totally sure what it really is. I'm sure that looking at the cards from year 1 and the cards from year 2 should show a big jump in quality. I also think that when you come back to them after a year away, you focus on them differently than you did a year earlier. And I think those aren't the only reason not to do them year round. But I will miss them.

Take care all.

What I Have Been Up To

I seem to add "what I've learned" as a tag to almost every post, but that is because I've been learning a lot over the last few months.

First a health update. I still have days when I need lots of recliner time so I can rest, and even lots of naps (sometimes more than one a day) but I am also getting stronger all the time. I now can walk up a flight of 8 or 9 steps with the help of a banister and a cane. Down too. Down is sometimes harder. I've begun to stop avoiding curbs as well, although I'm not as steady with those. I can go into a store and use a cart for support instead of using the store's scooter. The scooters made it possible to shop, but shopping is totally different if you are using a cart. There are parts of the store you just can't get to in a scooter.

So things are going pretty well around here, and I'm still feeling so happy most of the time that I bubble. Can't help enjoying the bubbling.

 I've been reorganizing the studio. I took a bookcase that has been in the garage for almost 10 years and brought it inside. I had to put a small file cabinet into the garage, because there no longer is room for it.

Basically I've run out of room in the bookcases that were already in the room, even with heavy culling.

 This is what the bookcase wall looked like the day the new bookcase came in. It doesn't look this way anymore, and it won't look like this when it is all finished. I'm going to get two additional shelves for the new bookcase, and I'm still deciding what is going where, and I've done even more culling of books that I've had for years, even decades, and which no longer are the kinds of things I'm interested in.




I also have a new toy. This is a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine. I wasn't doing paper crafts when the machines like the Sizzix came out, and I was seriously considering getting a die cutting machine. That was the one I was looking at, but I realized that the one thing I truly wanted to do was to make stencils, and a Sizzix doesn't do that. The Cameo does.

I have now cut 6 stencils. Two in card stock and four in plastic. Since the first two were the first things I ever cut doing them in card stock made sense.

It is interesting just how much one learns if one suddenly has a bunch of stencils, and if one is actually cutting them oneself. The designs I used mainly came from the Silhouette store. Some came from free cutting files on the Internet. None of them were intended to be stencils, and I've had to begun to manipulate the software that came with the Silhouette so I could actually make stencils out of the file. I'm a Geek, so playing with software comes naturally. And with so many YouTube videos, I'm learning fast.

When I'm not playing with the new machine, or trying to make order out of chaos in the Studio, I'm doing some Art Journaling.

I did this page last month, knew that it really wasn't finished and promised to show it again if I made changes. The changes are the lettering. I have never used stickers before, and it was interesting doing that on this page where the ones I had bought a couple of months ago were a reasonable size for the page. The page is in the small journal, so the fact that these stickers are pretty small is not a problem.

There is a woman on YouTube who sells what she calls an inspiration deck of cards with technique prompts on them. Her prompts wouldn't work for me. I don't have some of the supplies she takes for granted, so I started a deck of my own, on index cards on a ring. This was the first page I ever did using cards from that home made deck.

Frankly it is quite different from anything I normally would have done. I like it, I think. But I'm not sure.



 


The next three photos are from the Junque Journal. The one I made from a church magazine. It was intended to be a place where I experimented with stuff I'd never done before.

The profile of the lady is from one of the cardboard stencils I made. The successful one. I like her a lot. The unsuccessful one is in the background of the other page. The experiment there was doing all kinds of doodles that I'm not done before. I'm learning how to doodle. I'm pretty happy with both pages which are not a two page spread although that was the original intent.

The experiment here was doing a collage with papers I had made from doodle and scribble pages done with a very cheap oil pastel. These are actually Crayola oil pastels which cost under $6 for the box. Unlike most of the oil pastels art journaler's use these are not water soluble. But they really blend very well, and were fun to use. They were not fun to work over however, and the black at least turned out to be more water soluble than expected. The black smudged badly. I put a border around it with marker. My black Sharpie marker looked brown on top of the oil pastels. A function of the oil pastels and not of the marker I believe.

I added circles cut out of deli paper that I had printed on the Gelli plate, marked around them and then painted around them with black paint. The oil pastels were not happy with the paint either. And I added white dots and tried to splatter the pages. I don't splatter well. I don't splatter well at all. I just don't understand how to splatter.

But I will figure it out!

Finally one last spread done on the small journal I made myself out of really bad Gelli printed pages.

The first thing I did was use some of the colors from one page onto the other, in both directions. That unified the backgrounds. It was a technique I saw on one of the YouTube videos I watched, but I have no idea who's technique it was. Then ephemera from the Internet printed on my Epson printer which does not smudge. I tried stenciling on the borders of the square drawing, but I'm not sure I liked that.

This journal is also intended for experiments I don't seem to be comfortable doing on the "real" journals, although the layout isn't too different from some I've done in those books.


So that is what I've been doing. I've got a load of organizing to do because I've recognized that I won't be able to use the new bookcase for the art supplies. I moved some and have moved them back. The old bookcase wall is going to have to be where the art supplies go. I won't be able to truly organize things for another week because I won't have all my shelves in place until my handyman comes back. I've bought some organizing plastic, but I'm not sure if it is the right stuff or not. Etc. I'm in a waiting game right now, but I've got to get all this stuff off the floor because it is driving me crazy!

Take care all.

Art Journaling, mostly

Since the big Gelli Print day I've been art journaling.

 I did another face, and boy is this one better. I still need to work on painting eyes, but between watching YouTube videos and following the PDF file that came with one class I bought, I think I did a pretty good job. I did not paint the butterflies. They were from sheets of butterflies I found online and printed out and cut up.

By the way, a lot of people have problems with prints from their dot matrix (non-laser) printer smudging. I can attest that the Epson ink does not smudge once it is dry even when you are using very wet media to paste it down.

I'm pretty sure I showed this page before but I wasn't sure so I photographed it again. But just as with the butterflies above there was some pasting going on here. All of the sentences were printed on my printer, cut out and glued down.

This page started out with being completely covered with paper I had painted on regular copy paper or deli paper or book pages or very old music pages from the Internet. And all of the brides and grooms were from similar ephemera, from sites that have free downloads.

I had a lot of trouble with this page because the papers were all different and some of them wrinkled badly, and others went down pretty well. But I like the finished page.

By the time I got to this page I'd learned a lot about gluing things down. The two big green areas are from a napkin that had the birds printed on it. And it went down with no wrinkles at all. There was just a tiny bit of tearing, but I think I've finally figured out how to do this and get it right.







This one is from the small journal. The two color schemes are similar, but there are also differences. I did work on them almost simultaneously, and that tends to result in similar color schemes for me.









And finally this is what my table looks like after I've finished a project and haven't started another. I need to clean up and I will. That filthy glass is not the glass I drink from. I'm careful to keep my own glass far away from the table, although I did almost set my coffee cup in wet paint yesterday. The filthy glass is my water for painting. I need to come up with something else, but haven't figured it out yet.

Take care all.

I've been busy playing!

I've been playing, and buying stuff, and buying more stuff, and watching videos online, and watching YouTube in the living room and...and...and...

I have been buying way too much art stuff, and magazines and books on art, and I need to slow down. I got myself a monthly membership to Crafting Daily which has lots of videos on both quilting and mixed media. So far I've only been watching the mixed media. I've been watching so much I think it is possible I only need to keep the membership for a couple of months, but that will depend. Several ought to be watched again.

I've bought so much art stuff that today I ordered a rolling cart and two sets of small drawers to put on a shelf on my bookcase, because I need them to hold the stuff.

And I've been trying out several techniques.     


But first the saga of the small journal. At first it looked like this. I used a bad choice of pen for the writing, and it smudged badly, and looked just awful. It turned out that it was reactive with water when it dried. So back to the drawing board. I liked the drawing I did of the lilac as seen from my window just beginning to get its leaves, but I ended up covering the entire thing, adding some music paper and painting again.

Now it looks like this. This is not the end of the process since I intend to do some writing with pens that actually work.

But I am not too unhappy with how it turned out and I learned a lot about making sure my pens have permanent ink, and how to put paper down for collage, and not to cut the paper, like I did here, but tear it instead. All good.

 I have been playing around with putting color on the pages. I've shown this photo before. But I'm doing it again because here I pulled most of the color off with baby wipes. I do not know why mixed media people are so enamored with baby wipes, but they are, and I admit they work.







The white stuff on this page is cheesecloth from the kitchen. Again I learned a lot doing this background but I have absolutely no idea what to do with a page with this much texture next. I'm going to just turn the page and do something else until I learn a bit more.

More paint just slapped on. This is going to need a whole lot more layers. But you will see it again. I know that there is another layer on this but you probably couldn't see it in a photo. I stamped white paint on it with cardboard.

And talking about stamping stuff. One technique that I've been seeing on YouTube and also on classes from Crafting Daily is making stamps out of fun foam. These are sheets of craft material that kids use. I bought a package from Hobby Lobby, and sure enough bought the wrong kind. I got the kind that isn't sticky backed. So I've ordered the right kind from Amazon today. I'll be able to use both of them.

You make the stamps one of two ways. You cut out shapes and attach them to another sheet of foam and/or cardboard. I like how attaching them to foam works.

That is what the round and the chevron ones are. Both of the ones I made were quite small, but I really like them and I'm going to make bigger stamps.

The other kind involves drawing on the foam with a skewer, or in my case a toothpick since I didn't have skewers. I really liked how those came out, but I learned that the deeper and wider the marks are the better. I've ordered a set of stylus from Amazon so I can try those out and see if what I end up with is even better.

The paper is just copy paper where I cleaned the extra paint off my brushes, which is why there is color under all of the stamps. That is another technique all the teachers use. Do not waste paint. Make collage sheets and cut them up for other projects, or just paint the extra paint onto empty journal pages where you will either use what is there, or you will just paint over it.

I'm off to practice my lettering now. That mess on the journal page wasn't only the fault of the pen. It was just ugly.

More First Steps

I've begun the first steps in working on real physical art projects. I bought a 4 foot folding table which is now sitting  near my computer desk. It gives me a U shaped work area with the computer and desk stuff on one side and the art stuff on the other side.

In the past any art projects I did were digital, and I got very good at that, and at Photoshop, but there is this desire to play with real art materials. I had to hold off of that while my husband was still home. I could close down a digital project very quickly, but the clean up from paints and other wet materials would have been difficult problem. My health issues over the last couple of years also kept me in the recliner so this kind of stuff would not have been possible.

 I took this photo while sitting in the desk chair, but as you can see I've begun to bring the art stuff into the Computer Room.

Not all of it however. There is a huge amount of art stuff to be moved from my closet in the bedroom, and from other areas. I think I had stuff all over the house.

I am going to be pulling books out of the bookcase that I am now willing to give up. There are a lot of books I'm ready to release into the world. They will either go to Goodwill or to my local library, but I will need help to give them to the library so it is likely to be Goodwill.

Then I will have room to store the art supplies in what will become the Computer Room/Art Studio.

As you can see there is even more stuff still coming in. I'm calling a halt on any additional purchases until I start using the art supplies. I'll have a better idea of what I will be using and what I don't much care for.

I also have been doing some drawing. Faces are the thing I want to do on my art journals, but what I also have been most afraid of. But I don't think this one, which I just drew from my head is all that bad. Time to start adding color to these things.

Time also to do some other things. Today I want to make my first backgrounds. I have several sketchbooks, watercolor books, etc. and I also have some card stock that is loose. I'm going to start with the card stock, I think, while I catalog what else I've got.

I also have bought two video classes. One for drawing faces, which is where the technique I used on this face came from. Another is on drawing with pencil. I have one "chapter" on the face video to watch, and the entire drawing video. The face video shows 3/4 and profile faces and she paints the faces as well as drawing them. I'm going to need to watch the painting parts several times before I actually do her technique. It is a great video from Interweave by Jane Davenport.

I've got my new Roku box set up to show me YouTube videos. And I watched several mixed media and one face video last night. All three of them were quite long. I'm one of those people who learn by attacking what I want to learn from multiple viewpoints. Multiple books in the past, and now multiple videos.

Take care all.

I Think I Have Chosen a Direction

I seem to have made a decision about a direction.

 I have been buying books about drawing, mixed media, and who knows what else for years. And I've got a bunch of art supplies as well. Not as many as I think I need because I've bought still more books, a couple of downloaded tutorial files on two kinds of drawing, and a bunch of art supplies that are different from what I already had in the house.

I want to draw and I also want to do mixed media Art Journaling. I've known that I wanted to do those things for a long time. I was an art major in High School and in College. The problem was that I didn't like the stuff I was doing and didn't have a whole lot of respect for it either. After I left college I never picked up a pen or a pencil, and every time I tried to I discovered that I just felt awful and clumsy.

Instead I used both needlework and computer arts as creative outlets. I did digital scrapbooking for years until Joe got so sick I could not stand the idea. And I did very nice work. But it just wasn't enough. I kept buying books.

 Here are just a few of them.

I also took some photos of some of my art supplies.

I never had a full set of pencils when I was an art student. So those were fun to buy. And the Prismacolor pencils were actually bought for a quilting art project that I couldn't get to because of the Fibromyalgia. I did practice coloring on one of my sample  free motion quilting pieces, and they are an amazing tool.

 I did draw a few flowers from the How to draw a tulip. And it felt OK, so we will see where that goes as I go through the tutorials. The one already in the house is for what I call Art Journaling faces. I followed along with my first time watching the first half of that and sure enough I got a reasonable face.

The second downloadable tutorial is on regular pencil drawing. I need to find out how to get that after I finish here.

But I think my next hands on project will be to make some background pages using some of the paint I've got in the house and a couple of the surfaces I've already bought. I'd do that today, but I've got some gesso coming from Amazon and one of the YouTube tutorials I've already seen tells me that I need to put that on the paper first to make the grounds work better.

There are a couple of other things going on in my life that I have not blogged about. I bought a Roku box when I upgraded some of the television equipment earlier this month. I am slowly learning how to use it and adding channels. YouTube is one of the ones I want to add.

And I'm looking for a new church. My neighbor goes to one that is local and I went with her last Sunday and will do so again this Sunday. I was shocked when I received two "hello" notes on Thursday. Very pleasantly surprised. It is the one thing that my old church never managed. When I first went there I asked for someone to contact me for weeks, but no one ever did. And when I got sick they didn't figure out that I was missing for a very long time. I've discovered that I need a congregation that manages that kind of thing better.

Take care all.