I did it!

I have been back from Artfest for at least a couple or more weeks, but am finally making time to post about it. It was a fantastic experience, spent with great friends from all over the place. I look forward to these times to reunite with Artfest friends and also members of my Pirate Brethren (you know who you are)! It always goes by so fast, and I was still prepping to vend at Artfest for the first time, so I missed out on some activities, and hanging out with people as much as I would have liked. This was my first time selling my wares and it was just fantastic. Thank you all for the support before and during the show, buying my goods, and all the encouraging words. It was great to have people ask if I was teaching, and if they could buy my stuff online. All in due time! Many of you asked if I have an ETSY site, which I do plan on getting up and running, so please check back. It will have the same types of items, handmade artist journals, repurposed books, hand printed goodies, mixed media art, and reproductions of my journal pages. In other good news, I will be vending again at Journalfest this fall, so if you are going, please check out what I have to offer! I have a passion for visual journaling, and a lot of what I do and make reflects that. More to come... eye opening classes that I took at Artfest!

Still Here

I'm still here. Working away on handmade books, hand carved stamps and prints, and new business cards and various postcards. This is a tiny glimpse into what I've been up to. I will be back soon with a preview of the finished goods...

Playing with Paint

These are some paintings I did earlier this year. The top one is a watercolor of my trusty Diana+ camera. I love everything about this camera, down to the color, so of course it made a great subject to practice with watercolor. The bottom piece was painted with acrylic, and she is wanting to be worked on a bit more. I think I may add text to both pieces, surrounding the camera and figure.

Checking In

Hello all! I may have been MIA from this blog, but I have been busy working away. Plenty of journal pages in progress, some sketches, and many, many books have been made. I am getting ready to vend at Artfest in April for the first time, so that's what I have been up to. I am tremendously excited to be able to share my love of handmade and repurposed journals as well as my journal art with others. I'll do my best to get some more pics up soon! For now, enjoy these prelim sketch ideas.

Call em out!

Hello all! I have been missing from my blog lately, but busy in the studio. I have been doing a lot of sketching, painting, and working in my journals. Next on the list is a slew of handmade and repurposed books. I am getting ready to attend and be a vendor at Artfest, so it's busy, busy, busy over here! This is a journal page I did recently about calling out all those who have done me wrong. It's in my Pirate journal, so it is appropriate for me to call em out and fight em till the end. I ended up loving this piece even though it started out so far from here. It was a lot of fun, and really ends up being less about the injustices of my world than the way I deal with it. What I will allow and what I deem unacceptable. It's easy to go for pretty over truth, style over substance, but we all have to decide what and who we want to be. How do we choose to present ourselves to this world? As a shell, fragile and superficial, or something deeper, full of grit and truth. It may not be easy, and we may not always sit fully with ourselves, but it's worth striving for. Dig deeper.

Black Swan

When I saw the movie Black Swan I knew virtually next to nothing about it and went in with a completely open mind. After I saw it I was blown away, and the idea of duality really stuck with me. The film was one thing, but as my Back Swan Brethren sisters know, there is a deeper meaning in the black swan, or black swan moment. The first pages are more of an ode to the film. I loved the illustrated movie posters and printed one for my journal, but I wanted to incorporate it somehow. So I added other images as well as text from the film, and by the end it felt a little like how I imagined the inside of Nina's mind. The second spread holds it's place in my pirate journal. This one loosely represents the contradictions and dualities within all of us. It was fun working on opposites in it's simplest forms.

Holiday Loot

Here are a few of the wonderful things that I got for Christmas. My favorite gift was such a thoughtful surprise from my hubby, that I just stared in wonder at it most of the day. He had a leather moleskine cover custom engraved with one of MY illustrations. A very personal one at that, which represents my mantra, "Be Seen, Be Heard". Importance placed on what I do and on my creativity is also embedded in this gift, which was touching. I also got a ton of great Fossil goodies from my Mama which is so up my alley. And another piece to add to my pirate collection, this awesome skully necklace. I have been eyeing it for ages, and finally got it. The rest of the day was spent, just the two of us, with our sweet sleepy kitties in the sunlight and wrappings, and topped off with a nice meal.