This week I have a variety of interesting sites that I have stumbled upon. (Do you know about stumbelupon.com? If not, check it out!)
40 Inspirational Songs to Help You Reach Your Goals
Little Statues Carved from Crayons
Create a poster promoting you on your journal page. I found a rock concert ad in a local paper that inspired the style of this page. Create boxes and fill them with colors and designs that represent who you are. They don’t have to be great drawings or even make sense to anyone but you.
As I surf the net, I find all sorts of things that catch my eye. The pages I spend time on are interesting in their variety. I have so many interests and the internet is a wonderful place to spend time learning more about so many different things. Almost every day I thank God that I was born at a time that has allowed me to take advantage of the information age.
Here are three examples of the pages I find interesting:
I sooo want this dress! How fun would it be to color your dress?
Big Small is a text generator. You type in the word you want spelled out as well as the word you want the letters made up of and it creates it for you. Here’s the word I created. The only draw back is that you can’t save it. I used a screen capture program to save mine.
The last one is an interesting list of reasons that intelligent people fail. Smarts is not enough, alone, to achieve success.
About a month ago I created an “editorial” calendar where I assigned certain blog post topics to certain days of the week. I followed this calendar for a month, and I gotta tell you, it was so boring!! I just can’t do things in such a rigid manner!
I can’t explain why I am so resistant to routine and discipline but it just sucks the joy right out of anything for me. So, I’m going back to my regularly unscheduled randomness. However, if there was a feature you liked during my more disciplined postings, please let me know. I wouldn’t mind posting link love every week, or a free download, but if I don’t hear some requests I’ll just post whatever inspires me each day.
I found the coolest photoshop brush today. It makes photos look as if they were taken in a photo booth. That reminded me of a post that Heather had a while back on As I Write It. She talked about taking pictures in a photo booth and using them in your journal. I can’t remember the exact prompt, but hopefully Heather will forgive me if I’ve butchered it 
So, I’m reusing Heather’s idea and suggesting that you either take photobooth pictures and create a journal page with them, or draw them or use photoshop like I did! If you want the brushes I used, you can get them here.
The winner of a free Creative Clown class is Patricia. She left a comment saying she’d like to take the Waking Up to the Real You class. It is starting today, so if you weren’t lucky enough to have your name drawn, you can still take the class with Patricia and others who have already signed up. Just click on the Classes tab in my navigation menu.
Thank you ALL for leaving comments. I’ll have more contests so keep coming back!
You’ve got to see this site! Pattie Mosca is a very talented artist whose work I just love! She has several blogs, but this one is so unique! She posts the beautiful permission slips that she has arted up and written beautifully. There are permission slips for being in the moment, seeing your beauty and doing something badly. I think she should publish these as a deck of cards. Here is one of her cards, just to tease you.
(c)Pattie Mosca
In my art journaling courses, people frequently seem to be at a loss in creating a background to write on. Sometimes I actually create a painting, drawing or collage on a journal page, but most often I create a background to write on.
I don’t have something in mind when I begin, but rather, the joy of art journaling for me is to see where the process leads me. I usually just pick a paint color, start applying it to the page and the process just happens organically from there. So, this week I thought I’d just take pictures while I created backgrounds so you can watch how I work.
Hopefully this will help you see that there isn’t a “formula” or a right or wrong way to do it. It’s just a matter of playing with your supplies and doing whatever suits your fancy.
I didn’t think to start taking pictures until I was this far into the process. I use a book with text for my journal, so I just sloppily painted some purple paint on the page. I don’t try to hide the text because I like the way it looks peeking through. Next I applied pink paint to bubble wrap -the big fat kind- and lightly pressed it onto the page.
In the upper left corner of the page, you can see a darker purple design. That is from a fun foam stamp I made. The lighter pink designs are made with a small piece of plastic needlepoint canvas.
I added a wash of gesso (watered down gesso) over the whole page because I didn’t like how different the various values of color looked. Then I restamped the bubble wrap with purple paint.
I started this page by coloring the whole page with watercolor crayons in a gold color.
I smoothed out the color of the crayon marks by rubbing the page with a baby wipe.
I then added a darker gold for some accent and interest.
Again, I smoothed out the crayon with a baby wipe.
With the watercolor crayons, I made boxes with three different colors. They are not neat and geometric. I just stuck them wherever I wanted.
I smoothed out the boxes with a baby wipe. When you’re smoothing out a whole page, you can just smear it all around. But when it’s a confined space like this you have to be careful not to spread the color beyond the bounds of its design.
I cut a heart out of the page of a dictionary and glued it to the page. I then outlined it, roughly, with a watercolor crayon.
As I often do, I covered the whole page with a gesso wash. It would have been fine to leave it like it was. But I just like a more subdued color, and it’s difficult to find pens that will write over the waxy crayons.
Create a collage that expresses your feelings. Don’t use any obvious words like anger, fear, etc. But use colors and images that represent emotions in general or a specific emotion. If you aren’t feeling anything strongly, think back on a time when you did.
This course will begin a new session on the 15th. You will interact with me and other Waking Up participants as we work through fun, creative exercises to help you examine your beliefs about who you really are, reflect on how you became who you are, and look at who you want to be. The course is ten weeks long, with a lesson each week.
Below is a link to a free sample of one of the weekly lessons. Download it and see if it seems like something you’d enjoy.
If you would like to read more about this course, or sign up go here.
I have several classes starting up this month, and I’m going to give a class to one lucky winner! All you have to do to be entered in the drawing is leave a comment on this blog post before midnight on July 14th. I will randomly draw a name from all the commenters. To leave a comment just click the comment link just below this post’s title.
Good luck!
EDIT: I forgot to say that in the comment, tell me which of my classes you want to take. Select from all classes on this page.
