I'm Back (kinda)

I must say it has been a very interesting year so far. First the medical issue with the possible skin cancer that turned out to be a mole. (I am reluctant to return to the physician who cannot tell the difference and didn't do a biopsy to be sure, hmmm) And the gastric issue that evidently worked ittself out (not to make a pun, heh heh). All taking up huge amounts of time because none of my appointments through the maze that is now healthcare were anywhere close together. And since I had to travel almost 200 miles to get to this health care, I chose to stay with my sister since she lives in the same city as the health care facility. Also the fact that I am now completely dependent on my very small Social Security check each month makes planning anything that costs money relevant to that third Wednesday every month. So I have been home between June 25th and July 25 of this year since February!

The first time I brought my Etsy boxes and Art Fire boxes and planned on doing business from my sisters computer. I knew I would be staying a while so I packed accordingly. The second time I thought I would only be gone a couple of weeks (Boy was I wrong!) and decided after realizing that this would be a lot longer than I planned, to put my Etsy shop on vacation. But it has made me realize that this was a year to travel. Even though the travel only involved a very small area on the map of Southern California. So I decided to make a journal about it. I needed to do some artwork and had very limited materials (I was only going to be gone a couple of weeks, remember). Now I have decided this would be good for the blog, to inspire experienced art journalers and to be a kind of tutorial for those who would like to try this very fun, creative and inspiring art medum.

In the coming weeks I will be posting pages from this journal with ideas and noted on how I made them. I will also be adding some of my graphic stuff as treats for those that would like to play along with me.

So the basics. I started by folding 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper in half to make 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 pages. I nested these into groups of 4 (if you put more that 4 they have a tendency to stick out, if you don't mind that add more to your groups) these are called "signatures". I used bond paper, the cover sheets from the bond paper packages (nice and shiny and thick), construction paper, pages from an old tool catalog (this is a treasure I will be sharing with you later), and some lovely papers from a "stack" I bought at Walmart. Then I bound them together after stacking and marking them. This is my text block. I used the standard bookbinding stitch, you can use that too or any other stitch that holds all the pages together. I had a lovely piece of canvas that someone had had a painting printed on of yellow roses. It is stained beautifully and perfect for my cover. I used the back cardboard of the construction paper pad for the inside cover that I glued the first and last pages of my text block onto.

Then just for fun and to get things started I used postcards and greeting cards that a friend of mine was getting rid of to created tabs for the journal sections. I had no idea how things were going to be organized I just figured it was a good start. I love putting tabs in my journals.

Here is a photo of the first and second page layout. Stack paper on one side and construction paper on the other. The fish were from an invitation card, I cut out the bubbles and made the pink ones look like the thing on my back. I rubber stamped the torn paper before glueing it in and writing on it. The title is from a sticker page that came with the "stack". More to come.

Stay tuned.