Saturday Night art party

Well it has been a crazy busy week at school, and then I had to work all day today at my part-time job. I decided to work on some upcoming atc swaps tonight to wind down. Some are for a "Scavenger Hunt" theme swap on Nervousness.org and a few are for a free expression swap, and I also started working on an "Altered Images" atc swap. I carved the mermaid stamp to use tonight and I'm pretty happy with how she turned out! I really need to get a brayer at home, though, because the paintbrush application just doesn't work as well.

I also made an entry in Beth's journal, my art journal, and started a valentine for a secret valentine swap. I would have liked to accomplish even more, but it does feel good to get a few things checked off my to-do list. Tomorrow I have to go up to school and tackle some annoying jobs, so making art when I get home will be my reward.
Somehow I've managed to keep up with my resolution to make an entry in my art journal every day. Some days this week I really wanted to skip it because I was so dang tired, but I managed to get a little sketch or a little swipe of paint no matter what.
I was planning to post pictures of the books I made for my class last Tuesday, but I forgot to take pics. before I went to class, and darn it - that professor wanted to take them all home! It was so interesting to see everyone's different styles and techniques in the class (there are 10 of us). This Tuesday we're going to the *special collections* at the library and looking at all sorts of Artists' Books. Hopefully I can take my digital camera in and snap a few photos there.

And, soon I'll post a picture of my valentine's gift for Bill - the first *major* art purchase I've made. (I did buy an oil painting from my brother for $75 when he had his senior art show, but that's a little different). Anyway, I have it hidden right now, but it is a wonderful landscape that was painted by a woman that I used to teach art with.

It's official - I have yet another new hobby (thanks alot Wendy!). Last Friday we had an art teacher get together to make some jewelry to donate to a school auction. I had never really made much jewelry in the past, but making earrings is so quick and easy... I love it! I had to go right out and buy a few tools and posts to make more - Luckily they were 40% off at the craft store I visited. The earrings above were made with a set of handmade paper beads.
Today I sent off a fun swap package with 3 art pieces. I made a pair of earrings for a "Beaded and Bejeweled object" swap, this little coin purse for a "small sewn pouch" swap and I altered a box for an "Alter This" swap. But, I forgot to take a picture of the box, so I'll have to post that later. I really love this owl fabric. I used it last year to make a purse for myself.
I've been busy making lots of things this week, but I've been attemping to do more art and spend less time on the computer. As much as I love to keep up with the groups, email and posting to my blog, I sometimes use it as a procrastinating device.

Friday the 13th Artwork

Last night I wanted to work in some fish decos that I've had for awhile, and I was stuck for an idea. So, I looked around on the internet and found a photo of a "flying fish". I thought it looked really neat, so I decided to turn it into a hand-carved stamp. I used that as my daily devotion artwork in my art journal for Friday, as well.

Visual Correspondence updates

Beth and I have both updated the blogs for our correspondence journals with our latest entries. You can check them out by clicking the links to the left.

DD 1/3/06 & Insect Deco Cover

Here is a scan of one of my journal pages. 5 days in a row so far - pretty good for me. I think there's some statistic out there that if you do something a certain number of times in a row (15?) that it becomes your routine. Well, if I can keep this up for a whole year, it should make for a life-long routine!

The other scan is of a deco that I made for Destiny Art Decos using an grasshopper ATC print. I made the print using the same reduction process that I did for the valentine prints I posted about a couple weeks ago.

In the new year...

For a long time now, I've been wanting to keep a journal. I've never been able to be consistent with writing in one. More recently, I've been drooling over books and websites that showcase journals of a more artistic kind, like these and this.










And now, the DailyDevotions365Days yahoo group has inspired me to make a commitment to make art every day this year. Well, between teaching art and working on mail art projects, I probably would be doing that in a loose sense anyway... so, I decided it to structure my "daily devotions" as an artistic journaling project. I purchased a sketchbook that has 192 sheets, which will give me 384 pages to journal throughout the course of this year. I've scanned the first page, which has a list of goals that I would like to be able to remember as I work in the journal.