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!

This one was challenging for sure…at least for me.  You can read the challenge (which include a tutorial) here.  This month’s challenge was about monoprints.  I have to admit that I have long been challenged with this concept.  In one sense it’s simple.  You  put paint on something and then you lay it down on something else.  But every time I enter the monoprint world I suspect that these artists know something I don’t know, and they are trying to tell me but I just can’t receive it.  One thing I always wonder is this:  is rubber stamping monoprinting?  Anyway….I followed Michelle’s tutorial and did what she said.  I think I learned some techniques but I didn’t get the results she did.  I’m glad she said in her instructions that it takes practice.

Here are my attempts:

The first print was paint with an acetate shape laying over it.  So the print comes out with the shape in the center.  This was pretty cool.  I’m down with the lay it on, pull it up. 

But the second one was to pull up the acetate shape and put another piece of paper down.  Michelle’s came out with a really cool shape that looked different from the background.  Here’s mine…..

See?  I still didn’t have any paint in the center, and I don’t know why???

I always learn something from the challenges, and I like that I feel all disciplined by doing them.  But I don’t think monoprints is my gift :/

My son, Laddan, went to silver engraving school and now he has started his business.  I am so proud of him, and wanted to share his website with you.  You can see the buckles, jewelry, etc that he makes.  He designs each piece.  And each one is completely hand made, from cutting, engraving, soldering to polishing, molding and finishing.  He is the bull rider, so it’s a thrill to this mama for him to be expressing his creative side.   I would really appreciate if you’d go check it out, because the more hits he gets, the better his search engine rank will be, and we are trying to get him known online.  Thanks!

I haven’t posted in quite a while.  I had a bad fibromyalgia flare up after Christmas, then I had the flu.  Thankfully, I”m finally feeling human again.  And I’ve been painting!!  I am having so much fun painting furniture and larger things.  I had forgotten that is where my real love of painting is, and it is so fulfilling to be back doing it again.

Our neighbor is moving and he keeps putting this great stuff in the alley!  This is a stool we got from him.  It was really old.  It had five different layers of fabric on the seat.  The bottom layer was in shreds.

This is a chair we got from the neighbor, too.  It was caked with paint in some places and in others the paint was completely worn off.  I had to sand quite a bit, which I don’t enjoy, but it was worth it to get to the fun painting part.

Here’s a close up of the designs on the seat.

Lastly, this is a rug I painted on the back of a scrap of vinyl flooring.  I used acrylic paint and  sealed it with polyurethane.  The white spots are reflections from camera’s flash on the sealer.

I am late with this post, which ties in perfectly with my word for this year.  Acceptance.

I suck at a lot of stuff.  Really.  Especially if it has to do with follow through, commitment or responsibility.  I used to call myself undisciplined and immature.  But since I’ve been practicing acceptance I just call myself Zura Beth

Focusing on the word acceptance, and ways that I can bring it into my life has already brought about some changes.  Nothing earth shattering, but subtle changes that indicate it’s working to try to be more accepting of myself.

So, I am going to accept that I didn’t post this March update until the 13th of March.  And I’m going to accept that I can’t find the paper where I wrote the activities for each month.  And instead of posting an activity, I am going to ask you to do something.  Will you leave a comment on this post and let me know if you are seeing any results from focusing on the word you chose for this year?  If not, do you think you know why not?  I’d love to hear from you and know how it’s going with your word mission so far.

I finally took a picture of the journal I bound.  I learned how by watching Rice Freeman Zachary’s video here.

I used a comp book for the cover.  I removed the paper by cutting the threads.  Then I folded watercolor paper into 5 signatures with 4 pages in each one.  The next part is where Rice’s video was so helpful.  You have to plan out where your sewing stitiches will be and she has a great trick using grid paper.  Mine isn’t perfect but it’s much better than I expected for my first try.  I painted the cover black and glued on a page from Frida Kahlo’s diary.  I want to make more!!!

Whew!!  We took it all apart thinking it would be easier to paint, but it was a major deal to re-assemble it!!  There were lots of pieces to paint, but I finally got it done!  In the picture below, you can see the back side of the little insert that I covered with zebra tissue paper.  The original was a thin piece of wood with flowers cut out.

These are the end pieces.