down-and-dirty art

This is what I do when I have leftover paint on my palette.  Often these sketches and blobs of color have a much more expressive quality than the pieces I'm actually trying to paint.  Funny how that works.  :-)

Happy Friday!

a place for scraps

Here are some pics of a "life scraps" journal I started awhile back.  It's really not meant to be a pretty journal, as my goal was just to have a repository where I could collect these scraps quickly. 

One of the reasons why I started the journal was because, one day, I discovered a grocery list caught in some other papers and it was at least two years old.  Usually I put them in the recycling after I get back from the store.  So, it was fascinating to see what I was cooking/eating two years ago and it made me realize that it might be kinda cool to have a few groceries list (and other random notes, maps, etc) to look back on when I'm old. 

Washi tape and staples are my primary tools of attachment.  I tried to avoid glue, since the paper in this Moleskine journal is so thin.  In the photo below you can see the adhesive tabs I used to make it easier for me to flip through the booklet.

Sketches of our various remodeling ideas ... mostly trying to figure out how to rebuild our steep staircase.

For me, it's all about balancing my love of scraps with my desire to keep the clutter under control.... Happy Thursday!

more collage madness

Here are some pages from my collage journal (book on the right), which is nearly full.  I'm looking forward to making a new book that is slightly larger and sturdier.

This is the first and only journal I've ever stitched and bound myself, following the instructions in Gwen Dien's Decorated Journal book.  It came out okay, but the signatures (booklets of paper) aren't very tight to one another, so that is something I'm hoping to improve the next time around.

So, here's an example of how I work.  I might paste a couple random things on a page and then move on to the next page, doing the same thing.  I cycle through the book that way, adding more scraps at each pass.  (The pages above are at this stage.)  At a certain point there is a clearer direction on how the page is evolving and then I usually stay put for awhile to finish it up.  And then the process begins again....