I’m trying to put things in perspective today. First of all, I’m happy that I’m keeping up with the Life Book 2018 lessons thus far (just waiting for some hard pastels to finish the current lesson), but discouraged that I was only able to complete a fraction of 2017 and 2016 lessons – less than half of them.

For that reason, I hadn’t bound those years. I had this compulsive idea I wanted to bind them in order of the lessons – and of course since some were missing I felt paralyzed.

 

So I pulled out all my Life Books since I joined in 2013. Not too shabby! I completed ALL lessons in 2013 and 2014, and about ¾ of those in 2015. This week I bound 2016 and 2017, even though they’re not complete and not “in order.” I will add to them as I finish the back-log of lessons.
 

I’ve also decided to back my 2018 pages as I finish them. It’s really time-consuming to do it at the end of the year, especially when I'm so excited to get started with the new year's lessons. I’ve always chosen to ring-bind my books, because I like the option of removing pages if needed (to scan, display, or whatever).
 

Seeing this body of work reinforces to me that ANYTHING I produce is so much better than not being creative at all.  

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Art Journal video flip-through

I finally finished my last Life Book 2014 lesson, then made my video flip-through. This represents many many hours of art journaling. It's been such a learning experience!

 

This year (soon, I hope), I'd like to select a few of the pages and make cards and prints. They would have to be the lessons that I created with my own style (and not the teachers'). I plan to sell these from my Etsy store. Stay tuned!

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Test upload from phone - WIP

I've been working on a couple art pages. This one I put off for a long time, because I felt I didn't have enough ephemera to add to it. Or maybe I was just too lazy and disorganized to remember where I'd stashed stuff. I've never been good at adding lots of embellishment on my art dolls, and apparently on my pages as well.

This is a photo of my grandmother and great grandmother. I'm just waiting for glue to dry, then everything (except the photo) will be covered with white gesso. Then spray inks will be added.

 

I anticipate this may be difficult to add to my bound Life Book due to the bumpy stuff. Stay tuned! 

 

I was able to get to the project this evening. I think I may be nearly done.

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Life Book 2014 December Lessons

I can't believe it's December already! Life Book 2014 is soon to close, and I'm still about 13-14 lessons behind. Slowly catching up, but this is a busy time of year.

I haven't started my yearly Santa yet, but as I haven't heard anything about a work Christmas party/auction yet, perhaps there won't be a Santa doll this year.

For Lesley's lesson, we made advent pages. I had some trouble with the Transfer Artist Paper (it was probably old) so had to modify the lesson a little, adding crisper images on the flaps. It was frustrating and more work, but I like it in the end.

This was such a sweet lesson, taught by Kelly Hoernig.

This is where I'll put my video flip-through when all the pages are done and the book is bound.

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Life Book 2014 November Lessons

November already? Wow, October sure went by quickly! A new Life Book lesson was released today, but I'm in Kansas City for work and away from all my wonderful art suppies. More catching up when I get home.
Oh, and decided to sign up for Life Book 2015, you know, just to keep myself out of trouble.

A difficult lesson. I have very few photos of myself, so had to take a selfie. Awkward, at best. The painting part wasn't so difficult, it was having to look at myself!

 

 

Small miracle: finished a page the same day the lesson came out! Taught by Tascha Parkinson.

   

This week's lesson taught by Dyan Reaveley.

   

This week's lesson was by Serena Bridgeman (http://www.serenarty.com/). Her lesson included a technique using petroleum jelly as a resist. Couldn't find ours, so used Vick's Vapo-Rub.

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Published!

Today I came home from work to find my complimentary copy of Somerset Studios magazine, published by Stampington & Company. The Nov/Dec issue of this lovely magazine features an article about Life Book, and two of my journal pages are in there!!

The first (lower left)

And the other (upper left)

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Life Book 2014 October Lessons

Here's my take on Tam's lesson. Had fun with this one.

Here are my expressive florals, as taught by Tam Laporte.

  

Struggled a bit with this one, taught by Christy Tomlinson.

  

I put this lesson off for a long time, because I knew it would take me a long time tom complete. It may be February, 2015, but I finally finished my interpretation of Steven Speight's wonderful lesson. I used a photo of my grandson to model my figure, instead of Steven's Whimsical Wizard.  http://speightoftheart.com/

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Anyone know?

I'm working on a Life Book lesson from earlier in the year ~ drawing knick knacks using my non-dominant hand.

So I picked a couple old figures I bought on eBay years ago. Not much information was included in the auction description as I recall, so I was hoping someone out there would know something about these dolls. They're not very big, the faces are sculpted, and the bodies are pipe cleaners. I fell in love with them.

 

Oh, and here's the drawing (each figure done separately). I'm definitely right handed!

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

A Productive Week!

In addition to finishing my Amandine pattern, I managed to finish three journal pages for Life Book 2014 this week. I'm on a roll!  Still very behind, but making progress.

And now there's been an announcement about the teacher line-up for Life Book 2015! Each of the teachers is giving away a spot in the year-long course. Today's blog hop stop is at Effy Wild's site.

 

Here are the pages I finished this week. At this point I've just been jumping around to get to the lessons:

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Life Book 2014 September Lessons

This is the month I play catch up. I've got most of September, and if I can manage my time I'll be able to get so much done.

And though I'm falling more and more behind in Life Book, I want to finish my Amandine doll pattern before I start working on my journal pages. But just think...if I could do a page a day, that would be so cool!

I may need to add some more viney things to this page.

Here's my take on an artsy abode:

I still haven't done Carla's lesson, which is a series exercise.


This is my take on Flora Bowley's lesson. This style is way out of my comfort zone, but I'm glad I did it. It's always good to stretch your skill set!

Struggled with this one. It may or may not be finished.
Taught by Alena Hennessy: http://www.alenahennessy.com/

http://www.fracturedangelics.com/
It took me the better part of two days, but I like the outcome of this page. I used a copy of my sketch from Kate's earlier lesson.

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE

Rebellion

I am rebelling and refusing to do my laundry today.

Instead, I decided to finish one of my Life Book art journal pages. I'm working out of order to use my time most efficiently - so this one is from week 30, which employed a clever contact paper transfer technique taught by Carissa Paige:



Then I decided to get started on another page (this one Week 25, taught by Effy Wild, done over a period of days). There are several layers here:

 

Experimenting with a figure for the page:

 

Blocking out the figure:

 

Finished:

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE