studio stuff: and on day 5 i failed

Five days. That is all I could do. I tried to put my life in perspective and leave the mess each night. I called it therapy. For those of you who know me you will know that leaving my work area like this at the close of each day is actual torture. I lay awake thinking about it and have, in the past, dragged myself out of bed to make it right. I tried. Really I did.

DAY ONE ----->

DAY TWO ----->

DAY THREE ----->

DAY FOUR ----->

DAY 5  ----->

Sigh. I love order. I still won't be able to leave it all out before leaving the studio, but it will do for now.

on the worktable: art journaling

Working on this ----->

on the worktable: art journaling

Working on this  ----->

On the worktable: mini canvas love

on the worktable: bold color and stitched stacks

No matter how many times I sit and stitch these colorful hand dyed signatures, I never get tired of looking at them all stacked up like this.

Loving how my mini art journal is coming along! Almost finished and ready to share! Happy Summertime Creating!

on the worktable: mini art journal peek

Here are a few more peeks of my mini art journal. So happy with how this coming along and I can't wait to share the finished project with you all! This journal might be mini in size, but it rocks big color!

Happy Summertime Creating!

on the worktable: mini art journal peek

With Summer in full swing my once huge blocks of art time are gone, soon to return with fall and the start of school. Until then I have mini amounts of time - so a mini journal is on the worktable.

 - more peeks soon!

on the worktable: memory keeping & pocket pages

Making memories are the one most important things for a family and I love to document them. I found my way into mixed media art through good old fashioned scrapbooking. My problem with a layout was dimension. ONE doesn't cut it for me, so my pages ended up thick and expensive. Layer after layer after layer, but I loved my pages. In keeping with my budget for this year, I am trying something new that will save a bundle in money and time.

I really fell in love with the idea of assorted pocket sizes when I took Ali Edwards class One Little Word, so when I found these sleeve protectors by me & my big ideas I knew I would love this system style. I could save money without sacrificing layers because I would be working on a smaller scale.

 

I am loving mixing up photos with plain blocks of journaling or an oversized word that says it all. I am loving using up scraps that I haven't been able to part with because they are just too pretty! And I am loving getting a months  worth of memories down and ready to read in such short bursts of time.

   

In an effort to make this a productive and efficient  on going project  I did a little reorganizing. Next I printed a few sheets of number stickers that I made using different fonts in photoshop. Now I can easily label a pocket with the day of the event or memory. I printed tags and labels for layering some journaling.

I am still experimenting and will probably tweak each "page" several times more, but I like this system so far and will continue to play around with it for the rest of 2012's photos.

 As a side note - I was not in any way contacted by or paid to advertise any of the above mentioned classes or products, I just like them and so thought them worth mentioning!

storage worth stealing: re-purposed photo carousel

I have started a little ongoing photo project, and with it a bit of organizing. Don't you just love this thing?! It's a photo carousel - intended for displaying your favorite photos, but I needed it for something else.

  Well, I am finally getting caught up on some memory keeping. That's right - good old fashioned scrapbooking. I am behind in this effort and with my budget for the year in full swing I am on a mission to get this project rolling- but more on that later. This is an image of what usually happens when I get on a "week-long-catch-up-on-this-project-roll."

This makes it tough to get things done efficiently because I am forever digging through the piles to find the perfect embellishment, letter or paper tag. So I started shopping my home for storage to organize these pretty little things. After a little digging, I found my old 7 gypsies Photo Carousel and emptied it of a summers worth of miniature layouts. After transferring these to an album I sorted all my favorite embellishments and organized them into the carousel. Now I can easily get to everything I need and waalaa! - storage worth stealing for my little things.

This is the perfect storage solution to my problem. It is small, portable, and easily revolves so I can find just what I am looking for in a matter of seconds. Now my work area looks like this - yea!

I love it - and more importantly, I re-purposed something I already owned, so I am staying on budget. Perfect!

on the worktable: more scraps & new bags

Collected a bunch of new scraps and busy working on a whole lot'a sewing this week!