This envelope arrived in the mail last Friday! I knew it had to be from an art friend, because of how it was decorated! I started pulling off the washi tape, to save it and then I realized I should take a picture first! I covered up the address, and here it is.
This is the back. The orange scribble I added to the photo because the return address was written on the flap. More washi tape for my collection!
All the leaves are falling quickly. It just takes a bit of a breeze to knock them right off the trees.
I guess I should go out tomorrow and clean up the yard. I’ll put all the leaves in the composter so that I can start with a fresh batch of compost in the spring!
Last year, when the kids helped, some of the yard decorations ended up in weird places. We had better be more careful this year!
Welcome to Gnome-Vember!
I’m starting a new mini art journal! This time, it is about Autumn, Gnomes and the month of November.
The weather is getting colder, the plants and trees are shedding their leaves, and the garden is fading away, soon to be buried in snow. All of those wonderful garden ornaments have been forgotten and left to fend for themselves until spring!
Instead of working in a micro Traveler’s Notebook insert, for this volume, I’ve made a little, self-contained book. The paper inside is Aquabee, Super Deluxe Sketch book from the Bee Paper Company . The closed book measures 2" high by 1-1/4" wide.
When all the monsters are vanquished, you can fly!
If you don’t let all those children of the Inner Critic get in your way, or stop you from creating, just imagine what you could accomplish!
I have to shove my monsters in a closet, force them to go away, or just not listen to them… and then I can pick up my brush, or pen, or colored pencils. And art is what brings me joy, so it’s very important.
The Micro Art Journal Facebook group is currently having a trading session where we are each making a blank micro art journal and then mailing it off to our trading partner.
My partner sent me this tiny journal made from a Monopoly game card! I think it’s amazing! And it came in a fantastic envelope with a thank you card inside and a note from the sender. The envelope was sealed shut with washi tape, which I carefully peeled off and stuck to the Halloween dashboard that you see here. I am saving all of these parts to use again!
She’s the Mama of all the other monsters!
We each have our own Inner Critic. It’s that voice in your head that tells you you’re not good at something, or that you need to lose weight, or maybe that you’re not pretty/handsome. You know, that voice that makes you feel bad about yourself, what you do, what you want to accomplish. That voice that diminishes your confidence with each whisper.
I really liked this until I spilled ink on it. Or painted that. Or drew this.
How many times have I said that to my spouse or one of the kids. How many times have my students said it to me!
But you know what? Short of a fire (and maybe not even then) almost anything can be brought back from ruin.
Take this page. It had a beautiful rose on it. And then I stamped over it. Well, that didn’t look like I thought it was going to. Really. And I missed getting the stamp lined up properly on the right side, so it got even worse!
Let’s assume you are human. You’re going to make mistakes. We all do. They are part of life.
Without taking risks, trying new things and making mistakes, we don’t learn new things. However, if we never try, we don’t learn anything.
So, there’s nothing I’ve done in my journals that I couldn’t change. It doesn’t matter if it’s a misspelled word, an icky color, or a smudged stamp. I can always glue something on top, paint over it, or simply incorporate it into what I’m creating.
I several different times, as a child, I had one of those super boxes of 64 colors of crayons. They were one of my favorite things. I would often just spend time arranging the colors in an order that please me. Or, I would color various combinations on paper to see what they looked like. I was always fascinated by what new colors appeared when I squinted at my scribbles, using my blurry vision to combine colored strokes in my mind.
I have a great deal of difficulty with handwriting. When I was in High School, my English teacher asked me to write out my homework, like everyone else. So I did, I handed in a paper in my best, carefully done handwriting. The next day, she told me I had permission to print, or type from then on. She couldn’t read my paper.
So, I get it. I understand that you might be afraid to write on your page. BUT do it anyway. On these pages, I wrote the entire background. By hand. Using a pen that was kind of wonky because the ink didn’t flow evenly. And with mistakes. And with misspellings.
So many people tell me that they can’t do an art journal (or Zentangle!) because they think they can’t draw.
But, just about everyone had crayons as a kid. And when they did, they drew all sorts of things, like Mom and Dad, the house they lived in, the sky, trees and flowers.
The problem isn’t that they can’t draw… the problem is that somewhere along the line, they were probably told, “That’s not what a (fill in the blank) looks like!” So they stopped drawing, thinking they were not able to do it “right”!
Every artist and writer has times when the Blank Page Monster takes over and they just can’t get started!
For me, I slay this monster by using a pencil, and drawing a border lightly around the page. Then I write, lightly, what I’m planning on doing on the page. That’s usually enough to get me going.
If I don’t really have a plan, and I just want to do something… I grab my watercolors and paint in the background. A nice gradient, or fade between a few colors is always fun.
I’m starting a new insert for a Chris.W micro Traveler's Notebook . I am using an insert that I made, rather than one that came with the book.
This time, I’ve chosen the theme of Monsters, in particular, the ones that I have vanquished. Everyone has “monsters” in their lives. They are both internal and external.
Some of them are the voices in our heads that try to tell us that we can’t do something. Or whisper to us that we are fat, ugly or stupid.
The micro, case bound book I showed you yesterday was a great book, but I didn’t like that it was a bit bigger than my tiny book shelf.
I decided to make another, smaller book, this time with simpler, perfect binding. For the cover, I used a Gelli Plate print that I created with acrylic paint a while back. The print wasn’t great because the focal point got lost. But it is lovely paper for a book cover.
Right now, in the Micro Art Journaling group on Facebook, several of us are getting ready to do a “book swap” where we will be trading blank art journals that we have made with another person.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve made a book, of any size, let alone tiny! But I thought I would start with trying a basic codex. This is the most basic, standard form of a book. It normally consists of signatures of paper sewn together protected by a cover created by covering tag board or book board with cloth.
When I got back from vacation, look what was in my mail!
I ordered this tiny Key-Per from Jot before I left. But because it was coming from Canada, it took a while to get here. Unfortunately, it didn’t arrive before I left.
But check it out! It is a little less than 2 inches high, and a bit less than 1-3/4 wide, when closed. To give you a sense of scale, the star paper clip is normal sized. It’s a very good size for a micro art journal.
I’ve come to the end of my teeny, tiny, micro art journal. I made this out of materials I had on hand as a test to see if I like doing art this small. I tried all sorts of things in it, and it was a lot of fun.
I ended up making more than a weeks worth of layouts. There are a total of nine spreads in my little book. I have two more than “normal” because I made art inside the covers, also. I didn’t realize what happened until I the booklet wasn’t done by the end of the week.
The number of seeds in a dandelion are, like the number of stars in the sky… Beyond measure. It is the same with ideas. There is no knowing the number.
All of us are artists when we are born…filled with infinite ideas. When we grow up, we no longer trust our own creativity. We think we must be like someone else. We are not good, we are not talented, we cannot do this.
Sticking with the theme of seeds, here I’m showing someone peering fearfully through a tiny window and looking out on a garden. The garden is planted with all the things that make us happy.
So often, we push away the things that bring joy to our art. We are afraid to make mistakes, or worried about what someone will think about what we are doing.
It’s important to allow ourselves to be happy!
Jokes and puns about pie abound in this household. It’s a popular food item, and also a popular numerical value.
However, I set all of those aside, (perhaps to be revisited in their own tiny art journal,) so that I could use something that related better to the theme of the book I am working on.
If you will remember back, I did a page where the fruit was harvested . Now, I’ve baked all the fruit into a pie!