I wish I had...

That's the Roc prompt for Feb.

I wish I had...

Wow. Where to start?

Grace Kelly's looks, Warren Buffett's money, Steven Spielberg's creativity?  Yeah, that'd work.

However, I hadn't thought of those things when I did my spread, so there are different wishes on the page - some real, some silly.

Used my cost-a-lot-of-money-had-to-have-them-don't-use-them-nearly-enough Copic markers and had fun blending the various color families. It's not a sun or a flower. It's just a many-armed design element. Black marker, pencil for shading, gel pens. 

It was fun and I like how light it feels with so much of the background showing. Also like the black/white dashes around the center. 

Practiced my lettering by trying to make each one different, a la Joanne Sharpe's Letter Love 201 class I'm taking. 

Added little drawings or words to some wishes. (the 'more time to art' comment is 'picasso... monet... leslie...' hahaha) 

Just for the heck of it I added a little spider and web like I used to do on all my crazy quilts. 

Another case of it didn't quite fit on the scanner, so I pasted the 2 halves together in PSE 11 for the top pic.

crazy train - Jan 2013 ROC prompt

Playing along with Roc's prompts again this year. I'm always a month or so behind so I just finished January's spread today, the theme of which was 'what personal goals would you like to have this year?'

I love the wording here. Not what goals would you like to accomplish, but which ones would you like to have? Well, I'd like to have the goals to be skinnier, and to retire sooner. I'd like to move back to San Diego. I'd like to find an art journal group that wasn't an hour or more away.

However, those are mostly not going to happen, because I'm not a magician. Well, except maybe the first one, but that would require fewer cookies and more exercise so I think I'm good, thanks. Something that I'd like to accomplish in 2013 is to make more art. I have the time - an hour or so most evenings and one weekend day - but I while it away cruising thru all the wonderful stuff on Al's internets. Art blogs. Dog blogs. Garden blogs. Horse blogs. Chicken blogs. Tutorials for the art I'm not making. Really neat acrobatic vids on YouTube.


I'm working in the journal I made for the purpose and I started out by putting down some layers of paper napkins I liked. Then began doing some lettering because something else I want to work on is my lettering. Or lack of, actually. I letter in one style and one style only and I need to break out! Add to the repertoire! But just doing the lettering for the spread about lettering depressed me so much that I glued some gelli printed paper on top of it and started over. Only this time, I grabbed a photo I'd torn from an art book a few days earlier, simply because I liked it. Tore it in thirds and the rest happened without any further input from me.

The journaling reads:
 "Am I the crazy person jumping off the building, taking chances? Or am I the sane normal one dutifully pedaling off to work? (I'm quite sure I know the answer to that)  Please punch my ticket to the crazy train!"

ROC journal for 2013

front cover

When I began doing paper arts, it didn't take me long to realize that I work better with a prompt, a theme, a deadline - a breeze of some sort to fill me creative sails, as it were. 

Somehow I found this flickr group and played along with Roc's prompts in 2011. I think I started in May or June, but gradually went back and did the previous months until I had a whole year. 

back cover

Did them last year also, and I'm happy to say, she's doing them again this year so I am too.

I'm not sure why I like hers as opposed to the myriad other prompt blogs/sites/groups, but I do. The first year, I did them in a makeshift journal, interspersed with misc other pages.

In 2012, I made a dedicated journal which I liked much better (when I could find the darn thing! must tidy studio more often...). 

Coptic binding

This year I made a slightly larger one with a real cover and a Coptic binding so that it lays flat to work in. The binding didn't come out too badly as long as you don't look too closely. As we used to say in my Saturday quilt group, "If you can't see it at twenty paces from the back of a galloping horse..."

Coptic is a cool stitch and simply requires a bit of paying attention which I was mostly doing lol. 

The covers are heavy commercial wallpaper that I liberated from work. There's a roll of it upstairs that's probably six feet tall by many, many yards. 

inside front cover

In the Ticket To Venice class, they'd been chatting about using painted or collaged canvas as a cover and when I saw the wallpaper, I figured it might work. 

I covered one side in gel medium and torn up book pages, then did some stitching. The back cover is just random doodle stitching in tan thread.

inside back cover

The front is random zig-zag on one side and a freehand crow on the other. Then I folded each piece in half and stitched around the edges so they'd be pretty durable.

I put grommets in the cover holes since I was a bit concerned about the holes getting loose over time.

The pages are Arches cream watercolor paper of some unknown type and weight given to me by a friend, but they're quite heavy so maybe 140lb. 

I'm quite pleased with the final product.

Roc prompt

This month's prompt was 'if you were to get a new pet, what would it be?'

Since Mabel took up residence in December, I had no trouble thinking what to journal about.

She's still living upstairs, like a maiden aunt who's too shy to come down to dinner, but she's fattened up quite a bit and seems very content with her lot in life.

Maggie, our dog, continues to be fascinated by the fact that a real live cat lives in the house and stares at Mabel with rapt attention, so focused that when Mabel moves, Maggie twitches in response.

This morning I was in the kitchen when I suddenly heard a high, shrieking AR-AR-AR-AR-AR  from the guest room.

I galloped up the steps hollering both their names, not sure what was going on. Just as I hit the landing, Maggie shot out of the guest room and passed me on the stairs at about 70 miles an hour.

When I peered into the bedroom, Mabel was sitting in the middle of the floor, licking one paw. She turned and stared at me, paw in mid-air.

Yes? Did you want something?

We stared at each other for a moment, then I went back downstairs to make sure Maggie hadn't lost an eye or something, but I didn't see any damage. This evening she would barely venture up the steps with me when I went up to change. Lesson learned - don't MESS with the CAT!

The background is a paper napkin with a used tea bag torn up and glued here and there. I'm currently in love with used tea bags as background accents. Circles punched from a barn roof magazine page. A couple pics of Mabel, some markers and white gel pen.

2 arts

The first art I managed to make in my new studio was a couple pages done to Roc's march prompt of "what do you love the sound of?"

My first thought was 'words.' But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I love the idea of words, not necessarily the sound of them. Coming out of certain people's mouths, words are a horrible screeching noise that hurts my ears and gives me a headache. But I made a page before I thought all that.
Various papers glued to watercolor paper, then scraped over with acrylic paint using an old credit card. Or a new credit card, if you're on the austerity program like us. It's an ok page, but by the time I was done, I had thought all those negative thoughts about words and needed to do another one more true to what I love the sound of.

Falling water. Not the house built by Frank Lloyd Wright, but simply the sound of falling water, like a fountain in a courtyard or a trickling stream. I smeared gesso thru a curlyque stencil, let it dry, then dribbled several shades of blue and green Distress Stains all over, helping it out with some spritzes of water here and there. When it was dry, I wrote the words, trying to get a bit more interest into my lettering than I usually come up with. Need to go back and look thru the lettering classes I've paid for and pay attention this time.

I'm pleased with this page. Love the colors and shapes of the dribbles. Looks like rain down a window.

Roc January '12 journal page

Roc's January prompt was "what would you like to do this year?"  Sort of New Years resolution-ish but less binding and thus less guilt inducing when you fail LOL. She has a flickr group where she posts the prompts and everyone then posts their work. I found her in June 2011 and worked backwards until I was caught up, so this is my second year and I quite like her prompts.

I've always been an impatient person, eager to get thru what I'm doing NOW so that I can get onto what's NEXT. But once I'm THERE, I'm hot to move on to the NEXT NEXT thing. Not good. Makes for mountains of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) as witnessed by the boxes of un-quilted quilt tops, and half knit mittens, and partially constructed jewelry. And I'm often left feeling dissatisfied because I haven't actually accomplished much in the way of finished goods to look at or use.

So - my general, non-binding plan for 2012 is to settle into a few things I really enjoy and then ENJOY them more. Quit buying more supplies and use what I have. Finish stuff. Slow down a bit. Stop reading the last chapter of a book before I read the first 23. Etc, etc. Sixty might be a bit late to alter such a basic part of my psyche but I'm working on it. This journal page came of those thoughts.

I love the colors in this. I started off with pink and green Distress Stains smeared and blotched onto wet 140lb watercolor paper, then blotted with a paper towel to lighten it a bit. This is a spread in the small book I made for this year's Roc prompts. It's about 4x6" so the spread is 8x6. Lots of black marker work (Pitt artist pens) and some Copic marker fill here and there. A good start to the 2012 prompts.