So Busy...and the Art of Non-Conformity

I haven't touched my art journal since last post...just so busy trying to finish some work before we head off to the beach for a family vacation this Thursday.  And I probably won't be able to do anything until next week.  Aww! But I'm so excited about the trip because it will be my sons first time to see Boracay which is just such a beautiful beach with fine powder white sand.  This is such a treat for us and I have my dearest brother to thank for treating my family to this vacation.  I shall post pics when we get back ;)

Before I go, I'd like to share a link to this site that I stumbled upon, its called "The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau.  He talks about unconventional ideas, travel, art, life, work, personal development.  Very interesting.  I found a recent article of his, An Interview With Yourself to be a very good prompt for art journalers - he asks you to ask yourself questions like:

Dear self, you are x years old. What do you have to show for it? Are you living the dream?

As you look back on your life, what are you most proud of, what do you regret, and how do you feel about each of those things? Here are a few follow-ups:

• What’s next, self?
• Why do you do the things you do every day?
• What do you really believe in? (What do you know to be true?)
• Where do you find your security?
• What bothers you, and what are you doing about it?
• What worries you?
• If you had one year left to live, how would you spend it?   

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It's a great exercise,  I'm a little scared to answer it, LOL! Might find out I'm not living the life I want to live, whoa!  But I do know these questions would be great prompts for our journals - surely I will find some time next week to sit with my art and an interview with myself. 

Great big hugs everyone!

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March Art Journal Challenge

Joined the March Art Journal Challenge over at Art Journaling.Ning.  These are the mechanics: "Prompts will be posted, which could be one word, a material, technique or even a quote and the challenge is to use it in some manner in our art journal that day."

"The idea behind this is to jump start daily art journaling. The goal is to art journal daily but not necessarily to finish a page or spread every day, just to open the journal and work."

Week 1 prompts are as follows:
March 4th: "Doodle"
March 3rd: "Blue"
March 2nd: "Credit Card(s)"
March 1st: "Start Your Engines!"

I started some pages, they are by no means finished and I will continue to be working on them...

Blue:  (far, far from over..experimented with lace and sequins and beads, 

ugh I don't know what I was thinking....)

Doodle: Uhm, yeah, I don't know where this is going yet..

And this is something I just doodled today while working,
maybe I'll play around with pastels and color her in.

And of course, that led to another...

 

And another...I kinda like her, she's cute :)

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Recycled Tags are Cool!

I've been in a fog today, been waking up tired with my back aching although I see no reason for it to ache since I'm supposed to be sleeping on some kind of orthopedic mattress (or so they claim!).  Maybe its the jogging, I've been jogging lately and for the last 2 weeks have been doing 3 kilometer runs.  Today was especially hard because I kept feeling like my eyes were about to fall, even after 3 cups of coffee. 

I've also been so, so behind on my journal entries even if I have been trying to create something each day.  Although today I really could not help it and would putter around to my big table and sit for 10 minutes or so to dab some paint here and there.  I finally succumbed after dinner and sat down at my work table, keeping my son Enzo company while he was doing a school project.  I finally finished this "tag" project I had been working on sporadically for about 3 or 4 days now.

This project was inspired by a tutorial by Alisa Burke my newest mentor, even if she doesn't know it :) She had this idea to re-use those clothes tags and paint over them and use as gift tags.  What a cool idea.  Great thing I have this penchant for keeping tags I like (always thinking I may have a use for them later) Ha! You see, I just knew I'd need them (LOL!)

Except I created little miniature canvases out of them.

This is  where I started:

I still don't have gesso or gel mediums so I just brushed it with white acrylic paint 

and did some stenciling.

Next I just added some patterned paper I cut up from here and there.

Drew my images

Added some more paint and waited 2 more days till I could figure out where

I was going with this (hahaha!)

Could not resist just working on it today and just added more details, paint, collage...still something missing...

More details...That's better.

Pasted some scrapbook paper I had lying around at the back of the tag.

 

And here they are up close:

 

 
Miniature art, ready to hang on my wall, or maybe on my Christmas tree, my door, as a bookmark...I think I'll scan it and print it out on nice thick paper so I can give it away as bookmarks. 

Fun project.  Definitely!

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