I am so excited to tell you about this project that I have been working on for months.   It is a website that lists online art classes from artists all over the internet.  The goal is to have all online creative classes listed there.  So far, I have a little over 100 classes.  They are not only listed, they are categorized and there is a page for every class.  The page gives a description of the class, the dates and the cost.  That page has a link to the artist’s site where you can register for the class.  Every page also has a star rating system just like Amazon, so you can rate any classes you’ve taken in order to help others who are considering the class.  You can also write reviews of the classes you’ve taken.

It is my dream to have one central place where students can go and learn about classes being offered.  I know that I’m always hearing about a great class after it’s over.  If you don’t go to an artist’s blog or website you might completely miss their class.  This way the artists get exposure for their classes, complete with links to the sign up page, for free.  (I am selling graphic ads if anyone is interested, but the class listing is free).  And the students can leisurely learn about lots of classes in one place.

I am still entering classes, but if you know of a class, or you teach one and I dont’ have it listed, please let me know!!

I have dreamed about this for a while, and it has been really hard work.  My friend, Kristina, was a major help with moral support, ideas and data entry.  Mister, with his logical brain, has been a great help too. But, the feeling of having actually created what was only an idea is so exciting!!!  Please check out http://creativityclasses.com and let me know what you think!

This one was so fun!   The challenge by Michelle Ward on the GPP Street Team for this month is to tear strips of paper and use them in a journal page.

I tried one and attempted to use alcohol inks in a spray bottle over stencils and it made sort of a mess.  It’s fine to write on, but I decided to try it again.

I used a wall chart that is something about a graph of the history of man.  I tore pieced from that chart and glued them over a gessoed page.  Then I applied more gesso with a credit card.  I added brown paint around the strips and them sort of smushed it with a rag.   Then I added more gesso with a credit card.  I glued the angel in and accented some of her with watercolor pencils.

I have been through a lot of thoughts and emotions over the past few weeks.  I started building a new website and was so excited about it.  But about halfway into it, I realized that what I wanted to do just couldn’t be done by one person.  I longed for an assitant that could help me, but I have no money to pay an assistant so I got dismayed and just let it go for a while.  Mister and I discussed it a few nights ago.  He has this beautiful, logical mind.  He was able to ask questions and help me see the whole project from a different perspective.  Before I was seeing it as all or nothing, and he helped me see it maybe not as elaborate so that I didn’t have to discard the entire thing.

I’ve been working on the most important things today.  After I hear back from a couple of people with some info I need, I will be able to launch it.  I am really excited and I think it’s something that is going to provide a service of lot of us online artists need.  So stay tuned for an announcement soon!

My son showed up last Tuesday and surprised us with a three day visit.  It was just him and the 4 kids. His wife had to work.  We had such a wonderful time.  One day we went to Tulsa and the kids swam at my sister’s.  One day Randy took the boys fishing.  I made my granddaughter a dress and we did girly things.  It’s always an immense pleasure to be with either of my sons and with my grandkids.  I’m one blessed woman!

I have a few art projects in the works but nothing really to show.  I’m getting ready to record videos for my “Happy Feet” class which starts July 23rd.  It’s a really fun class where you learn to paint and decorate your shoes.  I’ve taught it before but this is the first time I”ll be adding videos.

This month’s challenge at the GPP Street Team Crusade hosted by Michelle Ward is to create a grid on a journal page and fill it with evidence.   I chose to fill my grids with paper, fabric and lace, because I am so enamored right now with sewing fabric and lace/trim on my journal pages.  I couldn’t sew them on my journal page because of the size of my book, so I glued them in.  I love looking at this page.  It’s not particularly artistic, but it makes me happy to see all the paper and fabric I’ve found or has been given to me.  I’m especially drawn to beige and pink.  It’s so feminine and romantic.

This challenge was easy but a lot of fun.  It also inspired me to use grids on journal pages for other ideas.

Update on my freind quest:  Today I found a scrapbook store in a town about 30 mins away and met two wonderful women!!  I’m going to go hang out with them and create.  Maybe this weekend!!!  You should check out their site. She has things I’ve never seen before.  Yummy goodies!!!

My “Find Your Personal Symbology” class begins June 22.  It is one of those classes that really engages everyone.  It’s not a technique class.  It’s a class where you learn to look at your own life and find the symbols that have messages for you.  It’s only 4 weeks long, so doesn’t require a huge time commitment and it’s only $25.  Please go here to read more details about the class and to sign up.  I hope you’ll join me!!!

There are times in every life of self examination, where you have to peel back a whole layer.  It seems to take a long time, and it’s never comfortable.  I find myself in one of those phases now.  Because I have experienced severe depression in the past, this phase always scares me.   I know digging deep always disturbs the complacency and throws me off balance.  But that feeling of discontent is eerily similar to depression so I get scared and tend to run to find a quick fix.  I’ve been journaling and talking to trusted loved ones which is my way of dealing with life’s challenges.  I think I’m making progress but it sure is slow going.

My life has changed completely in the past year, and I’m trying to find myself in the changes.  After living alone for so long, it’s an adjustment to having a partner.  I am so grateful not to be alone anymore.  Mister is the perfect companion for me.  He has introduced me to many things I never would have known I loved if I hadn’t met him.  I’m becoming quite the fisherwoman, and I’m learning to tie all sorts of neat knots for attaching hooks, lures and swivels to fishing line.  But with change, there is always something that challenges us.  My challenge is not having friends or family in the town we live in.  I am an extrovert and have always thrived by being with lots of people.  I have coped with life by having friends to talk to and to do things with.  When I’d tackle a problem or a project I always involved my friends.  It feels lonely now to deal with decorating, rearranging, planning things alone.  Mister is always involved in my plans and dreams, but what I”m talking about is a girl to go shopping with to buy supplies, or to change the furniture sixteen times to see which way it looks best. Those kind of things are not what guys typically enjoy.

Last week I went to Tulsa and spent three days with my sister.  We went to garage sales, estate sales and thrift stores for three whole days.  It was wonderful.  We sat at night and had those deep, comfortable sister talks.  It was great to be out and about and finding all sorts of art goodies.  My sister and I are the BEST garage sale partners.  We know what each other like and help the other find treasures.  I also got to see my niece and her little girl.  I miss seeing all of them.  I guess I took it for granted when I got to see them almost daily.

So, wanna see some of my treasures from garage saleing?

1. Some of the books I got.  One is the journal and sketches of a woman in the 1930′s who in remote Alaska with her husband.  One is “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell and the other is this wonderful little decorating workbook.

2.  This is one of the pages in the decorating workbook.  It has questions you answer, pockets and pages for pictures, color swatches, floorplans, etc for every room.

3.  A lovely cosmetic bag that I will cut up for the fabric to use on journal pages.   Some embroidered trim and a lovely pearl collar.

4.  A nice gray leather purse.  It’s that super soft leather that I love.

You might be surprised to know how many times I come to my blog, open up the editor and begin to write a post, only to give up in frustration.  Not because I don’t want to write.  But because I want to write so much.  It is difficult to know how much is okay to share in a blog.  Trying to select the most interesting, timely or entertaining things out of all I want to share becomes too daunting so I give up.

I read a lot of other blogs and I long for the ability to say the right thing and choose the right pictures to have an interesting and helpful blog.  I feel that my hit and miss ramblings are useless to anyone but me.  The solution to this eludes me, but I am going to try to just blog whatever I want to when the mood strikes.  I’ll see how that feels and try to quit over thinking it.

I want to know how people do those collages or mosaics of small pictures in their blog posts.  I usually see them on blogger blogs, so I suspect that might be a feature of blogger.

For my latest journal I wanted to work on loose pages, rather than a bound book.  I cut 9 1/2 x 14 in. watercolor paper in half to use for the pages, but it’s really too small for me.  I’ve done enough pages to bind into a book.  I like working on loose pages, but I need to use the full size sheets rather than the half size.  Here are a few of the pages I did on the small size.

I’ve been playing with different styles and ideas.  I’m layering paint and paper more than usual.  I just got a new dip pen and some new ink.  I’m loving playing with them.  I am mostly liking romantic, cream and pink, victorian looking pages.  So I want to use the dip pen and ink to write on them.  It seems fitting that a page with antique lace or paper that looks like Victorian wall paper, should have old fashioned ink to write the words.

I am still working on the new website, but as you know if you’ve ever built a site, nothing ever goes as planned and dates must be flexible to deal with problems.  So, while I wanted to launch the site this week, it isn’t happening.  But I promise it will be worth waiting for!

I haven’t posted in a while and I’ve been up to quite a bit lately.  I’d like to share several things with you.

I discovered journals with sewn paper and fabric.  I fell in love with the way they look, so I tried my hand at them.  I am not much of a seamstress so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed sewing.

This is the cover.  I don’t like it very much.  And, I’ll warn you that I didn’t cut all the threads before I took the pictures, so it looks pretty scraggly.  The cover was difficult because I wasn’t sewing the fabric on to a back. Just trying to form the rectangle shape of the cover by sewing pieces together.

Here are a few of the pages.  I planned them with lots of paper on each page because I write a LOT in my journals.

A while back I showed you a chair and a stool that I got from our neighbor who is moving and getting rid of stuff. Wellllll, the other day they were loading the moving truck and I guess they didn’t have enough room because they put an antique desk out in the alley!!!!  I nabbed it so fast it would make your head spin.  It’s so unique.

(It is sitting in our laundry room, where I sometimes do art, so excuse the mess in the pictures.)

When you first see it, it looks like a hall table.

But when you pull up the knobs, it reveals a little desk!  The board you can see with the indentions, actually slides out to create a larger work space.  See the little cubby holes?  Isn’t it great?

Today Mister and I went fishing.  It was wonderful to be in the sunshine.  And I saw some nice nature.  These are some pictures I took.

This is the shore near where we were fishing.

The colors of the sunset were reflected on the ripples in the water.  And there’s a Big Bird cloud, too!

And another shot of the shoreline and the sky.

This was so cool!!  I saw this cloud that looked like a fish.

I looked at the water to see what the reflection of this fish looked like.  How cool is this?

So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately.  Oh!  Except for a secret.      Kristina and I are creating a website that you are going to LOVE, if you are involved in the online art community.  It’s really awesome.  We’re hoping to launch it in a week or so, so stay tuned for that.

I feel so blessed this mother’s day.  I now have another son, Randy’s son Tyler.  He and his fiancee gave me such great Mother’s Day gifts.  This is a fabric covered sewing box.  It’s perfect because I am working on a fabric journal cover and I can keep all my stuff in there.

And they also gave me this cool mug!!!!  And a sweet little book called “I Prayed for You Today.”

My two boys called me early this morning to wish me a happy Mother’s Day.  They are so good to me.  Every day!  I’m a very blessed mama!!!

Yesterday I spent the entire day making a journal.  I found these great vintage looking pages at Sausan Designs.   When I saw them I wanted to make a journal with them.  There are 5 different pages and they’re all old and used looking.  Aren’t they great?  I printed them out and glued them onto manilla folders.  Then cut the folder down to the page size.

I used some game boards I got at the thrift store for the covers.  Yes, I put the covers on upside down.     I sewed the signatures onto some sturdy, stuff fabric.  Then I used black duct tape to attach the covers to that fabric and pull it all together.

I reinforced the attachment by putting the duct tape inside each of the covers as well.

I’m really into making books right now.  I may never buy a journal again.  Hopefully, I’ll learn to get the covers on right side up eventually!

This month’s challenge from Michelle Ward at the GPP Steet Team is to work in a size out of your comfort zone.  She suggests we either work much larger or much smaller than we normally do, just to get out of the norm and challenge ourselves.  Since I normally work in a larger sized journal, I decided to make a tiny one.

I used a scrap of cowhide for the cover.  I made the pages from some pages I had torn out of a novel.  The larger book is the journal I’m currently working in, so you can see that it is much larger than the little one I made.

I have been wanting, for years, to add beads to the stitching on the spine of a book, so I took this opportunity to do that.  The coloring isn’t good in the photo but the stones are red coral and turquoise.

This is the first page in the journal.  I wrote like two sentences because it’s so small!!

This is one of the spreads.  I prepared the backgrounds similarly to the way I prepare backgrounds in my regular journal.  I glued papers down then used a credit card to pull dark brown and titan buff paint over the page.  I found it very hard to work so small.  The results weren’t bad, but I didn’t enjoy the small size.  It was indeed a challenge for me.  But I’m glad I took the challenge and did work outside my comfort zone.  I need to be shaken up from time to time.  Otherwise, I find myself using the same supplies, the same techniques over and over, and that is so boring!