How Did I Get Here?

Art Journal - Weekend Spark 5/21

OK. I know. It looks like a love-sick seventh grader made this. It SO did not turn out the way I wanted. But oh well. Moving on.

This was the weekend spark for Shimelle's art journal challenge for 5/21. Again. I'm behind.

The question was: "what is your favorite place to just be?" Well, I couldn't think of one place over any other, unless I went broad and just said home. And one of my last entries was on home. So instead, I went with a frame of mind: In Love.

It's all acrylics... hand painted background. "In Love" Foam stamped and the rest of the words are hand painted.

How you like them polkie-dots, ash?

OK.. try not to laugh too hard at my amateur artwork :)

Art Journal-Week 5-Alliances

Ok.. here's my week 5 entry. Yes! I am behind.

so what?

anyhow, Shimelle's prompt was about ALLIANCES in our lives. Lots of pages about husbands on this one. But I couldn't narrow it down to just Jon. I mean, he is by far, the biggest ALLIANCE in my life. But there are more... other groups I am connected to that make me stronger.

So here you go. Jon, my sisters and my girls.

Nowadays... I think I may have to amend that.. and add in the FAB5. You know who you are ;)

The pics I made into a collage in Photoshop Elements and printed directly onto the paper... the background is colored pencil and some MM stamps and acrylic paint.

I like how the colors and the pics all blend together... like they're separate... but still one big part of me.

Week4-Home

I forgot to color correct this after I scanned it. Oh well.

Anyway, totally behind on the art journal challenge. That's ok, Shimelle says work at your own pace... and I may not get to sit and create the moment she sends out our weekly assignments... but the ideas are spinning around in my head all the time.. and that's cool.

Week 4 assignment was Home. I took random pics of things I thought made my house my home... and then journaled the feelings I have about my home around it. The middle pic is my door knocker you may remember from a Photo Friday entry I had a couple of weeks back.

And look angib! I used a white pen... I actually found it in my stash and thought of you. :)

I realized, as I was making this page... a lot of my house is either blue, red or yellow. Nothing like primary colors, eh? what do I live in, a school house?

I also love the juxstaposition of connor's toys on the bookshelf just below my scrapbooking books and papers.. and jon's "artwork" on our message board. He's always drawing something up there... I should start taking regular pictures of those!

Oh well, thanks for looking... I'm off to bed. Monday's tomorrow, you know... grrrr.

Art Journal-Week 3-Wheels

Week three... I'm on a roll now.

The topic for week 3- wheels. I thought about getting philosophical about wheels of life-seasons and whatnot. Nope, I went with what I think if when you say "wheels"- my car, and the click-wheel on my ipod. Two things that feel truly "me". My car is bright yellow-just about everyone that knows me associates this car with me. My iPod is like a gift from heaven-to me. My music, in any order I want, I don't have to commit to a set playlist like on my cds. It's awesome.

For week 3, Shimelle told us to try something different. So I made the entire page digitally. That's definitely different for me. I usually alter my pictures digitally, but rarely, if ever, do I make an entire scrapbooking page digitally.

Again, I fall back on simple. I just don't like my work to be too complicated. The rest of my life is complicated enough-don't need it in my art.

Art Journal-Week 2-Risk

So I've been SLOOOOOWW on the art journal challenge... this entry has been in the works for a couple of weeks now.

The topic for week 2 was RISK. I've thrown my hat into the ring for a new job at work. A pretty big risk for me, considering I've been doing the same job for 8 years- the same show for 5. The three words in the middle I had stretch across each page, because I consider them to fall in both the "risk" and "reward" categories.

The Art Journal Challenge website is down for the moment, so I can't post my progress there... but I had to get it scanned and ready to go, so here it is.

Art Journal

First off, let me say Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful mothers in my world :)

Now, I joined the art journal challenge. I know, I'm a lemming. But I have to be creative in my work, as well as my scrapbooking, so I'm hoping this will challenge me a bit artistically, and it just feels like the right time to do some journaling. So here I am.

I worked on the cover last night, while Jon was working special duty. He came home and saw the journal on the table and thought it was one of my scrapbooking books :) He kept saying "great job, honey- I'm impressed". Which made me smile... just a little bit. So here's my cover:

I took the picture last night, cropped it down to just my eyes, and fooled around with it in photoshop. What's weird is, that's really the color of my eyes-I turned the photo black and white, and erased the b&w eyes, and put the diffuse glow filter on it. Now, if I can just be this artistic on the inside pages...

Oh! And another cool thing about this challenge? Jon is doing it with me. I am so curious to see what he comes up with.