A Little History about the last 5 years

  It's been five whole years since the last post.  So much has happened.  I needed a project to distract me after Stephen was gone and also wanted to be more self sufficient because I would now be out here all by myself.  I had a garden when we were raising goats and had fresh manure and hay leavings to make compost.  The goat pens are empty now but there was still quite a bit of manure left in all three big pens.  Plus Stephen was ornery about paying for spent tires when he changed tires out for flats (he always bought used tires because the canal road is so tough on them) so he had piled them on either side of the driveway, sometimes 4 or 5 tires high!  I did some research and decided to create a tire garden to grow food.  It was started by just stacking tires and filling them with dirt and goat manure.  The physical labor was good for my body and spirit.  It gave me something to do and the satisfaction of accomplishment.  I started it in the Fall of 2012.

Dear friends,  I have not kept up my regular posts because my husband was having health issues and so was I.  He went in for a cardiac quadruple bypass surgery on May 3rd and was doing fine and the doctor was talking about sending him home after about 10 days.  Then on Mother's Day, when I went to visit him he was acting funny like he had had a stroke.  The next 12 hours were scarey with calls to the doctor, changes in medication and nothing helped.  Evidently his liver just gave out due to the surgery, and he passed away on the 18th.  I have been really sad and at a loss to do any work online because this was a shock frankly.  I have many things to deal with now that are a bit overwhelming, but am determined to get back into the groove.  Look for new pages from the travel journal in the Fall.  In the meantime I am on Facebook and keeping my Etsy shop alive as best I can.  Thank you for keeping the faith.
Donnalda
https://www.facebook.com/donnalda.smolens
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Donnalda?ref=si_shop

New Pages of My Travel Journal

I hope you have created a journal and are ready to start creating the page designs. I love tabs and created them with postcards glued to the pages with about 3/8 of an inch sticking out past the page edge. After that I glued little titles to the tabs on both sides. You can also trim them with rounded edges. I used the tabs to divide my trips, going to Riverside, back home, and up to Joshua Tree. However, the year isn't over so I have plenty of blank pages to add tabs to when I need more. Consider this a work in progress, rather than something that needs to be finished in sections as you move on.

On the right is an envelope glued onto the page to hold various bits of ephemera from my medical stuff (the reason for all the traveling this year, and the theme for the journal). On the left is the page with details and little stories filling out the theme. I created story cards from index cards and made pockets on the page by just glueing the sides and bottom of the piece of decorative paper that I added to the bottom. I also added a narrower pocket on top of that one and tore the top edge. I love measuring tape decorations. You can scan your own and print it to use on your pages.

You can also get out your markers and begin to color the page edges. I do this while sitting in front of the television in the evenings. I like to lay down a band and then work smaller elements into the band. I use squares of a darker color on top of the drawn band, and then little detail elements in the lighter squares, or little detail elements in the darker squares (use a white gel pen for this it is great). You can also use rubber stamps to decorate the borders, and then color them with the markers.

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.

Book of Shadows FIRE at my Dawanda Shop

I have had this there for a while but I couldn't post very many pictures of it. So I thought I would put them all here so you can see the book all in one place. This book has about 80 pages so I couldn't show every one but you get the general idea here.

A Fundraiser Sale Item to help Designedby Lucinda

This is a sale package I created to help a fellow Etsian who has suffered a tragic loss due to an accidental home fire. All proceeds will go to her and her family to help them replace some of the tangible items they have lost. Please take a look, I have offered five journal spots, tags, labels or alphabets (basically, all of my downloadables are included) for only $10.00. This is a great deal and you will be helping someone who really needs it.
Here is the link to the downloadable section of my shop:

Donnalda.etsy.downloadableshttp://www.etsy.com/shop/Donnalda?section_id=5792236

Alphabets are my new fun thing!!!

I have been having so much fun making alphabets from my artwork. I am including a free gift for everyone who comes to my blog. This is one of the extras from my Romantic Alphabet. Just click on it and click on "Save Picture As" to save it to your computer. Have fun.