Playing Catch Up with my Planner

This page was made before I fell behind. The challenge that week was to document what you are thankful for. I also bought some neon paint that week, so of course I had to use it! The little girl and boy are cut from some junk mail envelope.

 These pages start the weeks I'm catching up...thank goodness for facebook, so that I can look back and see what I was doing! The challenge that week was to use book text, and there was already a page from a French book tipped in to my planner that week, so I made it about my dream to visit there one day.

I also wanted to try doing a matte medium transfer, so I used a magazine photo. It turned out pretty well! After I rubbed the paper off the back, it was a little cloudy, but brushing a little more medium over the top cleared it up pretty well.

 This is the other side of the French book page....a quick sketch of the Eiffel Tower, which I hope to see one day!

I filled in the rest with bits of my week, including exploring Hot Springs, AR with Jeff. That middle photo is of a gorgeous stained glass ceiling in a bathhouse in Hot Springs. Hot Springs is one of my favorite places in Arkansas so far.....beautiful town and countryside!

Drawing at the lake...

It's been windy and cold at the lake. We have no heat there, so we bundle up, or even sometimes go out antiquing to get warm!

I've been spending time on the porch where the sun heats it up a little better.

I've been painting backgrounds and drawing flowers. While things would dry on the backgrounds, I'd go out and draw some plant from the yard.

I've only made ATCs once before (a long time ago), but we had some playing cards that didn't make a whole deck, so I gessoed them. I put it on kind of thick so it takes a while to dry.

I brought Derwent Inktense pencils with me, so that's what I used to color the ATCs and also to add color to my drawing. These are very cool pencils...different from watercolor pencils in some important ways. There is a nice article HERE about the differences. The colors are much bolder once they are wet with a brush, and I'm still getting used to that. In real life, the climbing hydrangea is very subtle colors that would be easily achieved with watercolor, but I veered from reality and made them brighter since I was using the Inktense pencils.

Loving playing with the colors. I colored some directly on the cards and then wet with a damp paper towel. Others I loaded the brush with water and used the pencil as a watercolor pan, drawing up pigment that I could paint with and splatter around.

I wrote on some with Indian ink before or after painting. It will be interesting to see where these go.

Draw a house

I glued in some paper I made using the Gelli Arts printing plate. That always seems to make a good starting point!

The prompt this week at The Documented Life Project was to draw or collage a house. I already put my house in the book earlier, so I decided to use one of my favorite houses ever... I had an old sketch of our family's cottage that I cut down to size and added some color to it with Inktense pencils.

Then I glued in lots of pictures of our family at the cottage over the years. Wish I had space for more of them....that's when I sometimes wish I'd picked a bigger journal to do this project.

Blind Contour and Gelli Prints

 This week started out with a trip through the Shawnee Wine Trail in southern Illinois, so I took a piece of paper I printed with the Gelli Arts printing plate and drew a blind contour of a wine glass and some grapes. A beautiful background paper makes a simple drawing look like something special.  The Documented Life challenge was to use embroidery floss, so I embroidered the word "wine."

I added a tip-in, cut shorter than the page, to add some photos to my week.

Putting Pictures in my Planner

This was a very full week with Mother's day and traveling!

 I put many miles on my car during that week, but I also had a great time! After I got home I printed out some pictures and glued them in. I also used pieces of the Magnolia Blossom Festival program. That is one well put together festival, and if you love steak, it's the one to attend!

I was going to do this week without a tip-in. hahahahaha. I ended up with a tip-in with a tip-in! That last little tip-in is a pocket and contains more pictures.

Scarlet Lime Pen...

 I've heard so much about the Scarlet Lime pen that is supposed to write over practically anything. As much as I looove Pitt pens, I've ruined many of them by writing over acrylic paints. I doodled some coneflowers over a envelope that was printed with acrylic paints on the gelli plate. So far, so good! I hope these pens are as good as they say, and they just might be the answer to the pen problem. I'll still stick to Faber Castell Pitt pens for drawing and watercolor sketches...I love the Indian ink.

Documented Life Project...use a rubber stamp in a new way

  Well, I use rubber stamps a lot, but usually only the alphabet stamps to write, so most anything I do would be "new" to me. The trouble was, I was at work and wanted to start on my page, and I didn't have any rubber stamps at the shop. I started with a background of Inktense pencils, spread around with a wet paper towel. Love the colors.

 Then I had to find something to stamp with so I cracked open a Coke, and used the lid. I had a stamp pad that was dye ink, instead of the Staz On that I usually use.

Filled in the circles with Inktense pencils and wet them with a paper towel. That caused the ink from the stamp pad to run as well, but I kind of liked the look. I then inked up the Coke lid again and stamped over them again.

 I used numbers punched from an old calendar to mark the days....

...but I still needed a rubber stamp. I looked around, and found the shop's return address stamp. I've only ever used it on envelopes and our receipts, so using it in the planner counts as "new!" Now my week is ready to go! I'll post a pic once it's all filled in. No tip-in this week. I'm trying to do some pages without them because my planner is full to bursting and it's only May!

Three Rivers

This is a piece that was commissioned. I wanted to incorporate elements of the recipient's Native American heritage. All the elements have meaning, the ledger paper I drew the Indian on, the map, the stars, the 7 feathers, the arrowheads.  It was interesting trying to get it all to work together. The customer was very happy with it, and that makes me happy!

I wanted to use the 7 feathers, and I also wanted to make them look a bit magical, and the "zentangle" or doodling seemed to fit the bill. The little dots and circles are to represent the wind....to make them kind of swirl around the piece.

I loved making these feathers and will be making more of them, I'm sure!

I drew this hunter from the image on the website. I tried to find multiple images to work from, but the one on the Sappony website was the only image I found of a Sappony Indian. I went ahead and drew from it, since I wanted the Indian to be accurate for that tribe, and not a generic image.  So, I did him in ink on vintage ledger paper, and antiqued the edges a bit with ink from a stamp pad.

Feathers and pressing on

I was going a bit crazy last night. I'd been trying to do the background for a piece that I need to have done soon, and nothing was going right. I kept muddying up the colors and...well my mojo had left the building. So I covered it all in gesso and started over. I decided that maybe simpler was better, and I picked 2 greens and a yellow and applied them with a credit card. I like it! Especially since I've started drawing over it with the white. I need to work some antiquey papers on to it as well, and I'm not sure how that's going to work, but think I might be able to mesh the two somehow. I have a couple ideas floating around in my head.

Random Act of Kindness

This weeks prompt is to document a random act of kindness. I have a few in mind for this week. Sometimes it's as easy as giving someone a smile, and sometimes more complicated. So far, I've just paid for the car behind me at McDonald's so that's what I drew.

I used Inktense pencils for the background, and some circles I received in "happy mail" for the dates. The other circles were from happy mail too, and I just colored them with the inktense pencils.

More calendar pages...

The first week was a busy one and does not include a Documented Life Project prompt, because somehow I did two on previous spread.

I had to have a go at drawing the great vintage sign at Merichka's in Joliet. We had a great dinner there, and I'll be drawing that sign again one day, I'm sure.

 This last week the Documented Life Project prompt was to use a quote you like. I chose one about mermaids, because if I were some kind of fantasy being, I'd be a mermaid, of course.  This was a busy week of traveling with my dad to deliver things to Jeff's new home. It was a whirlwind trip, but fun to see where he will be living and also to see parts of Arkansas I'd never seen before. We took the train home, which I rather liked!! I learned that I was not far from the boyhood home of Warren Ludwig and his wonderful mother Miz Dee. Someday maybe I will get to stop in and meet Miz Dee in person!

Dad and I stopped at the Pink Elephant Antique Mall on Route 66...what a great place. Visit there if you get the chance!

I almost feel like I cheated on this spread. Why? Because all that beautiful background and the cool stickers came from some "happy mail" I received from Lorraine Bell. The background was the envelope! Check out her website. She does such beautiful work. Thanks Lorraine, for the beautiful package!

Converse Chucks...Documented Life Challenge

The challenge last week was to incorporate your favorite shoes. I was thrilled with that challenge, because I'd just taken some pics of my feet up by a Smoky Mountain stream in my well loved Chucks (all my Chucks are well loved).

 Then I finished out the pages by adding maps from brochures, and pictures I took that week. The round stamps that look like postmarks are national park stamps. They have them at the information desks of all the national parks, and you can stamp your books or drawings for free. I also found that some of the bags they pack your souvenirs in are plain and some are printed with the map of the park, so I started asking for the ones that were printed. The drawing with the orange background is an old journal page featuring my converse sneakers, so I reduced it and taped it in.

The backs of the taped in pieces have other photos and parts of postcards glued to them so that they are interesting when flipped open. This is a small book, but I'm managing to squeeze a lot of memories in there.

My planner is starting to get pretty thick! I'm thinking before they year is over, I'll have to rebind it...that will be another new thing to learn!

Documented Life Project...

The challenge on that week was to incorporate packaging from a food box. I was on vacation, so I didn't have food boxes around, but I had a bag from a distillery we visited, and decided to use that. It made a nice frame for a picture I took of Cumberland Falls in Kentucky.

There are a couple of flaps made from pictures and part of a post card. When you flip them out, this is what you see. I used as many photos from the week as I could...it's a small planner, so I have to edit..that's hard!

The Harbin Girls

This week's prompt for The Documented Life Project was to make a monochromatic page. I happen to be at the office and had a package of happy mail and a magazine...all of which had quite a bit of green. The tip-in for that week was also a yellow-green....so green it is! When I saw the little girl, she reminded me of my sisters and me when we were little. There are three of us, born in a 3 year period. Everywhere we went we were referred to as a group: "The Harbin Girls." It's a happy memory, and I like being a Harbin girl!

Tangle Stack...

The Documented Life Project prompt this week was to write your name. I was inspired by another DLP member to try a Tangle Stack...doodling/zentangling. I am at work and have just a few supplies..old books, a black pen, and highlighters, so that's what I used. I also used Gesso to knock the pages back a bit...yes, I keep gesso at work..very important stuff!

Edited to add:
I've added some pics from the week. I am terrible about keeping scrapbooks, so I'm trying to add little photos to my planner.

Creating during Cleanup

Yesterday, I had to clean up the dining room table, since family is coming to visit, and we will need a place to eat! I've enjoyed having the art supplies out, and close to the running water. Before I put it all away, I figured I'd make one more background, so I'd have something to doodle on.

Hmmm. Wonder what this will be?