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.

Face Inchies

Here are some inchies I did. First I drew leetle faces on marker paper with a Copic multiliner. Then I colored them in with markers, and cut the faces out. Next I cut them right in half -- ouch! I glued half a face on each inchie. I cut the inchie blanks from boxes and then glued on a background paper. After I put the face on, I put on a few accents with gel pens. I traded some of the inchies and kept some to put on the big inchie canvas I was working on.

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.

Laundry Machine

I HATE laundry. Not sure why, cause it's really not all that hard to do. Our apartment complex has machines we can use, so it's way easier than when I had to wash by hand. Nevertheless, I have been known to go buy new underwear or socks in lieu of washing my dirty ones. Well, today I finally did laundry. I spent more than $20 in our quarter washers and driers - that's NINE loads of laundry. How can two people have that many dirty clothes????

Lookie here!

Oooh, Tanya named me a BFF -- Blogging Friend Forever, how cute!

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.

Make it Mondays: Houses

I made these ATCs for a swap, and they fit with the theme of the Make it Mondays challenge too! Neato :) I had fun making these. I used my copic markers, then put some colored pencil on top. A few gel pen accents.