Sometimes you fall down...

...because there is something down there that you are supposed to find.

Skip the blabla about...'here I am again' and 'is it really almost two month since I did a blogpost?'..
No blabla about blogging once a month or once a week....or about getting things done...
I bumped into this quote on Pinterest a while ago and this is more the way I feel now:

Which also means I'm hanging on to my art journaling...
Having two jobs, three kids, a dog and a household...I got a lot of balls to hold up in the air! But I'm getting pretty good in this juggling thing..so now and then I try to sneak in a ball named 'art journaling'...

I started a new 'Teesha Moore-style' journal, cutting up a big sized piece of watercolourpaper and simply binding it with a thread. I feel these journals work the best for me, having different sized pages.
Here is the first page..I even thought of making a 'before' and 'after' picture for you!
This is the page with only a painted background and the collage:

And the finished page:

I have the beginning of the next page also for you...

A lot of penwork still to be done...I hope to get back soon with the final result!

TFL!

Sandra

Get back up...

Once, there was a time that I created two or three pages like this in a week...now it is taking me a month to complete three pages.
But..as I am a positive thinker...three is more than creating nothing at all! So, to keep up with my blogging frequency once a month now, here are the newest pages in my pizzabox journal.
It seems like I'm in a flow using 'heads, flowers, birds and butterflies...and some fish!'

I started decorating the cover of my journal too. I decided to give it a metal look, inspired by this video on YouTube:

The front:

Omnia Causa Fiunt means: Everything happens for a reason....

There is an extra flap on the right side, where I added some gears to symbolize my brain:

And the back:

As soon as I have finished all the pages in this journal I hope to find a way to bind it all together.

To be continued!

TFL!

Sandra

Happy!

I'm very happy with my last three pages, in my pizzabox journal. I bought some new paint in all the colors of the rainbow and painted twelve new backgrounds in one session...
Three have ended up like this:

I love rainbows...

TFL!

Sandra

Slowly...very slowly....

...am I getting back into creating art and blogging...
Slowly...very slowly..life is beginning to get some grip on solid ground...
I moved, together with my three kids and my dog, to a new place which we can call home again. We moved back to the village where I grew up as a child...I feel extremely lucky that this little spot on this planet is ours now.
The summerholiday was spent painting...lots of paint!...redecorating, cleaning, packing our stuff and moving.
Now, all the boxes are unpacked! Which means my art journal supplies were screaming at me...Use me! Use me!
Which I did....yeah!
First of all I will show you two pages in my pizzabox journal I made in the beginning of July, before I got all caught up with packing and unpacking my things.

(Body-part is from Crowabout Studio, I'm sorry, I can't remember who I have to credit for the crown...)

And these two pages are made last week:

(Border on the left from Tumblefish Studio)

I hope to be back soon to show you more...I really do! But life can be so unpredictable sometimes...

For now...TFL!!!

Going on...

Three more pages in my pizza box journal (size 24x24cm):

(Image from Girl Whimsy by Tumblefish Studio)

(Image from Girl Whimsy from Tumblefish Studio, text by Antonio M Arce, found on Pinterest)

(Image: body from Girl Whimsy by Tumblefish Studio, head from my own artwork)

TFL!

Sandra

Two more 'pizza box pages'...

(Image from Crowabout Studio, border on top from TumbleFish Studio)

(Border on top from TumbleFish Studio, image from my own art work)

TFL!

Sandra

Pizzaboxes recycled...

I started a new journal: a pizzabox journal! Not that I didn't have any journals to work in any more...but simply because I wanted to try something new. Apperently I'm not a person for a thick, fat journal with lots of pages but more a person of themed journals, with only a few pages...
I cut pages (size 24x24cm), leaving the fold from the box as it is and so I created a double page, with four sides to work on. I have decided to wait till I have finished enough pages before binding the journal.
I created a cover of a bigger pizzabox, but I still have to decorate this.
I cut three pizzaboxes, creating 3 times 4 pages and applied gesso to all of the pages. One afternoon I sat down with all my acrylic paint and randomly painted the pages with my fingers, trying to use lots of colors and shapes. (Good therapy, I can tell you, when you have lots of personal issues going on!)

Inspired by Kate Crane and Dawn DeVries Sokol I started doodling and adding text and images to my pages. I used Sharpies, Prismacolor pencils, washitape, rubons, a Faber Castell Pitt pen and a white marker.
Here are the first three pages:

(House image and 'Home' from Zetti Bird Junction, Crowabout StudioB )

(Bird image from Zetti Bird Junction, Crowabout StudioB )

So far, I'm very happy with how it all turned out. Hopefully more to show soon!

TFL!

Sandra

Deck of Me 2013..some more...

I haven't had the inspiration to work in my Deck of Me journal for weeks...untill last week!
I completed five weeks in a couple of days....
Here they are:

TFL!

Sandra

Doodling faces

Size A4. I cut out a black and white picture from a face in a magazine, glued it in my journal and simply doodled on top.

Same here...only now I cut the face in pieces before glueing it in my journal and added some color and text to my doodling.

TFL!

Sandra

Hello again...

I can't believe it is already more than one and a half month ago since I wrote here on my blog....
'Life' is still giving me lots of hard times. I feel like I'm in a kickboxing fight, undergoing and collecting all the punches and kicks and surviving each round...waiting for the final knock out...
Although, I still have faith in a good end for all of us. In a fight like this there are no winners, right? So skip the knock out and hopefully we can call it even...

My inspiration has been going up and down lately. Mostly I just don't feel creative...I read books and crochet a lot. Now and then I grab my art journal and try to paint or collage something. Sometimes I'm satisfied, sometimes it is more like 'oh, well...ok...for now...'
I have joined a year long challenge at a dutch forum, called 'Deck of Me'. During 52 weeks we get two prompts to write about in our journal or scrapbook something. You can chose to use both or just one of them. I managed to stay on track with this challenge (yeah!). I work in small altered book, which I bought in Sweden last summer. All my pages are about my divorce and how I'm handling all the changes, emotions and setbacks, searching my way for a new beginning.
I'm not going to show you all the pages in it, but here are some of them:

I know...not the style you're used to...which has something to do with the size of the book too. It is about the size of A5...way too small to make a decent collage! But just the right size to work on with a weekly prompt...

During one of the peaks of my inspiration, I found a new way to reproduce my artwork!

More about that later...but I can show you one page where I used my own design:

Recognize something?? 

To be continued...

TFL!

Sandra

A leap of faith...plus video!

I thought it was time for a new video...so here it is!

In this video you see me making this page:

Did you notice the envelope behind the girl....I put in a little booklet with some journaling. Such a great way to hide your journaling if it is too private!

TFL!

Sandra

She's the girl...

A new page in my DbD&Me journal....

TFL!

Sandra

Still there...

Yes...still here...fighting my way through life! I've had some tough weeks, both emotionally and physically, counting my blessings daily and fighting all the battles one by one, day by day, step by step.
I have also been creative and messy in a bigger size: 'wallpapering', painting, organizing, redecorating and cleaning...all to make my house look great now it will be for sale soon.
I tried to squeeze in some 'me'-time but it was hard to find some inspiration and get things done...
But, since I'm trying to see all things in a positive way: I did something instead of doing nothing at all!

First of all, I finished my crocheted rabbit! I made it for my youngest daughter Laura. I started in December and stopped when only one leg needed to be done (and sewing the parts together)... Now, after two months I finished 'Rosie'...

She is sitting on a cover for a pillow, which I crocheted back in November. The purple, pink and red thing is the start of a granny square blanket....so still lots of crochetwork to be done here! To be continued...

I also made some more art journal pages, but as I said, I didn't have lots of inspiration. I just wanted to set my mind to something creative and not think about anything else...Art journaling is such a great creative outlet!! Love it!!

TFL!

Sandra

And more...

TFL!

Sandra

And some more...

TFL!

Sandra