you always know

has a week passed by already?! i'm gonna show you my new journal before it gets paint and glue all over it...

i used corrugated cardboard for the covers again, putting masking tape over the edges and eyelets in the holes before i started painting. after i got the paint the way i wanted, i glued a PaPaYa card on that i'd been saving for a couple of years... i ripped off a couple of strips of unbleached muslin, attached them to the back cover, and then wrapped them around a button sewn to the front for a closure (after the covers are done i use an awl to poke the holes for the button and muslin, that way i can see what placement looks best).


i'm a coptic stitch binding addict... the pages lay open in a wonderful way, and there's a sturdiness and flexibility about signatures bound with coptic stitch that i love...

the pages are half 140# arches cold press, and half 140# st. armand watercolor paper. the arches does crack a little at the fold, but it doesn't go all the way through and i've never had a problem with the pages tearing at the fold, even when the journal has been through months of use. i tear the pages out using a deckle edge ruler which is way easier than cutting, and you get a nice, soft edge.


a poor picture of the second page... i covered up the whole page with a piece of muslin (you can see the frayed edges around the page) because i had so much paint on the page that i didn't like and it seemed like a good solution to the problem.


this is what layer 5 (or was it 15? :) looked like -- much better than layer 4, but i couldn't see anywhere to go with it, so down went the muslin...


some of the pages are narrower than others, and this is one of them. this figure was the first stencil that i cut... it was drawn by karin and was on a piece of tissue paper, so i glued it to a sheet of printer paper and cut the stencil from that. i was so thrilled about cutting my first stencil!


the back side of the page above, and probably something that only a mother could love... it's the paint that i scraped off of the piece of glass that was on my art table. i needed a clean piece of glass for stencil cutting, so i scaped all of the paint off of it and then glued most the paint down here. it's a kind of visual record of the painting i've done at my art table in the last year.


the bird is the second stencil that i cut. can i say too many times that i'm happy about cutting my own stencils?!!


jerry stopped by to sniff everything when i was taking pictures yesterday. this is him telling me that i've missed my best chance for photographing his big cat self...


i spent a lot of time last week on the stencil cutting thing... figuring out which images i wanted to cut and printing them out... i chose karin's figure, a bird, and a tree. this piece is on canvas board (4" x 6"), and i used the bird and the tree, although i wiped most of the tree off... i used caran d'ache crayons, acrylic paint, tim holtz crackle paint, twinkling H2O's... everything!


more experimenting with the bird and tree stencil. this piece is about 6" x 9" on 90# arches hot press, and is going to be a big post card. stenciling just cries out to be used as mail art...

the hearts at the top of the page are from a stamp i carved... in the process of printing out stencil designs i printed out a version that was way too small for a stencil, but perfect for a stamp.


i tried something i've been wanting to try for a while, which is to draw over the design with a pencil and then rub the pencil onto the stamp material. it worked like a charm! the pink arrow is the original heart (you can see where i've put pencil over the black), and the other hearts are tests of my stamp. i kept taking away until i got the one in the upper left. there are lots of images here that can be used for making stamps...


a postcard (about 4" x 9") that i made last week with the stencil i cut from karin's figure.


the graffiti wall has been cut up, and is now in the process of being made into graffiti prayer flags. i added a little paint and rubbed in oil pastels on these pieces, which make up the first set of flags. they have much more artifying to undergo before they're done.


morning light...


and more morning light... these cumulus clouds grew before our eyes as we sat outside having coffee two days ago. within minutes of taking this the blue sky was no longer visible... amazing!

have a beautiful week!

XO