Soul Journalling

Crafting 365, Day 73
Originally uploaded by Mixing-Katie

I ran across the Soul Journalling prompts on Goatgoddess's blog, and I sure am glad I did! These prompts are a lot of fun to work on. I started a new journal to work on the prompts -- an old German textbook. It's over 400 pages, so I've got LOTS of space to work with. I've been gluing several pages together for sturdiness and ripping out pages as I go so that the book will stay closed. A fun activity to work on while watching TV!

Lost and Found (again)

Crafting 365, Day 68
Originally uploaded by Mixing-Katie

Sometime last year I got a moleskine sketchbook. I was so nervous about doing anything in it that it stayed blank. Then I started a little drawing in it and a little magazine collaging. And then I took it with me when I visited my parents for the holidays and the poor hardly used journal ended up under some pillows and didn't get packed up when I left. I didn't notice for at least a week.

On an unexpected trip to my partents' place, I remembered to look for the moley and brought it back. It found a home under some dirty laundry. I came across it this week when I finally got around to washing some clothes. I recently got a shipment of twinkling h20 products (serendipity??) and decided to test out the radiant rain daubers on the sketchbook paper to see how much water the pages can take. (BTW, luminarte is having a HUGE sale through June 14) The page dried out nicely and is very nearly flat. I think keeping the book banded shut will straighten it out.

After I smeared on some of the radiant rain color -- of course, I had to try out four colors, why stick to just one?? --I doodled and wrote with india ink and gel pens. Then I decided to see how the gel pens and india ink would do on top of the magazine paper. The two pages don't really match, but they were fun to do. And I've done several more pages since these ones dried.

I'm also planning on making this sketchbook my handy dandy notebook to carry around in my purse and catch ideas.

Good luck charms

now that I know how to take macro photos, I can show some close ups from my journal! I did the photo editing for these pics in iPhoto, and I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to do it.

The latest pages that I finished feature a Suzi Blu girl. I drew her with colored pencils and watercolor pencils, then did different color washes in the background. I used a dye-based ink to stamp in the background, so when I added water to the water soluble crayon in the background, the stamping blurred a bit and the brown color bled out into the blue and green.

Here's a close up of one stamped clover, showing the bleed into the background. You can see a little bit of the texture of the watercolor paper as well. Here the blue is watercolor crayon and a little bit of water soluble oil pastel. The heart in the center is gel pen, and is a little metallic IRL.

The clover is a new stamp for me -- got it in a super fun round robin box via ATCsforall.com. The box has gone from person to person, and each one takes supplies/ephemera and adds in something new. My kind of fun :-)

My little doll-girl is wearing cutesy stockings (wish I could remember what I did with MY pink and white stockings, can't find them in any of the usual places!) and holding a horseshoe for good luck. I was thinking about lucky things, and I included the horseshoe, four leaf clovers, and a chipmunk. I dunno why I think chipmunks mean good luck, but I do :-)

So, here are some pieces of my journal pages on luck. I'm feeling extremely lucky at the moment, because Christmas vacation has finally begun!! Hoping that you've got good luck coming your way, too.

Journaling

Finding the perfect journal is hard! So I have a few different ones that I add to when I feel like it. Here is my latest -- it's got thick watercolor pages and chipboard covers. I cut up a pad of watercolor paper into fourths and then used the bind-it-all to put the journal together. Ended up with two journals, one for me and one for my best bud, Dee :-)

The first thing that I worked on in mine was inserting a compass. I got some cute scruffy little compasses from skybluepink a while back and have been thinking on how to get them into a journal. I cut circles out of half the pages and then glued the compass to the back cover: I was able to get a good pic of that cause I finally found the MACRO function on our camera. (it's only been about a year since we got it, lol!) The holes fit right over the compass, how fun! It may be a challenge to incorporate the compass in to so many pages, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Here is the first spread that I've done in it, with Copic markers and multiliner. The words are lyrics from "These Days" by Nico.

Photo Journal

I'm in a circle journal group on ATCsforAll where we make two page spreads -- one page has a photo and the other page is our interpretation of the photo. This time the theme I worked on was 'trees.' I took a picture of a pretty maple tree near my apartment building. I've been admiring it as the color of its leaves change. (Since I took this photo it has lost nearly all of its leaves)



I haven't done very much photography, but I do like taking pictures. I signed up for this journal group thinking it would inspire me to carry my camera around with me more often. I have taken more pictures than I normally do, but I still feel a little weird taking pictures on campus when people are walking around.