ponderings

Registration is almost open for 21 Secrets!

Don't forget that registration for 21 Secrets starts on January 2nd! There are some great artists participating...what a great gift to give yourself for the new year.

Click here to go to 21 Secrets.

It's Christmas Eve!

We're having fun here in sunny Arizona...listening to the soundtrack from Elf, making raspberry cheesecake & coconut cream pie (my faves!), and other holiday preparations. Tonight's dinner is Panko Shrimp, asparagus, & baked 'taters. Tomorrow we're having fennel & coriander glazed ham, potato gratin, veggies,  homemade rolls...yum. So...lots of cooking ahead, but I don't mind. It will be a delicious couple of days!

Remember that you can sign up for my newsletter here. I won't bombard you with emails, I promise! I'll keep you updated on class offerings as well as offer a few tips & tricks along the way.

Here's another page from this week. A few notes about this page:

• There was color on the background from previous "leftovers"...i.e. when I blot stencils, use up extra paint, etc. Often when I need to blot a stencil, I'll turn to a page in my journal & blot it. Later on when I get to that page, I've got something there to work with. Love it.
• I grabbed a pen & just wrote over the color...poured out what I needed to pour.
• I grabbed a tag from my "unfinished projects/warm ups" box and decided that it would be perfect on the page.
• I cut up another painty/inky tag to make the hearts. Easy peasy!

I am wishing you a wonderful holiday...be merry!

The page from my messy desk...

Remember this page? It was one of my "in progress" pages from my desk shot a couple of weeks ago. I finally finished it by adding green to the circles. That's all it needed, I thought. The colors on this page are amazing. I did the background with Fig Magenta Maya Mist and Lemon Metallic Maya Mist. I tell you, I love those two colors. Love. Love. Love. And when they mix, they turn a beautiful orange. I also used Purple Twilight Colorwash by Ranger to spray over the figure.

A few notes about this page:

• This is in my huge watercolor journal. The paper is extremely porous, so I did coat it with gesso.
• I sprayed the inks and then moved them around with a very watery paintbrush.
• I did the white text with a white Stabilo Marks All Pencil.
• I cut the silhouette from a magazine.

 

Journaling Deep with Samie Kira...

My friend Samie Kira has a new subscription-based inspiration newsletter, Journaling Deep. She also has super cute stamps, available from Paperbag Studios.

Here's more info about Journaling Deep:

Journaling Deep is a year-long email-based class for visual journalers. You can join at any point. And these notes will be delivered as PDFs, direct to your inbox, each Thursday for $10 a month.

They come not as a pre-planned series of boring posts, but a living, morphing diary of my own explorations and experimentation in my journal and artwork. When I become excited about something new, I share it with you.

I'll also be peppering in digital goodies like collage sheets & backgrounds, essays, observations, etc, to help keep your creative juice flowing. 

Since each little bit is delivered to your inbox, there's no searching around, going to a website, remembering log-in information -- it's all right there, at your fingertips, forever. Print them out and work on them later. Share photos of your journal pages. Get direction on something you're curious about. There's really no limit to the bursts of creativity we can create together. 

And all for the price of 2 lattes a month.

 

December is kicking my boo-tay...

I hope you are all having a great holiday season. December is a crazy month for me...two of my fellas have December bdays, as does my hubby. Plus our anniversary is in December, plus Christmas. Plus all of the end-of-year concerts, etc. Busy, busy!

I am journaling, though...will try to take more pics & share this week. I started painting this funky face today...still need to add text.

Are you finding time to make art this busy holiday season?

Creative Jump Start Summit 2012

The ever creative Nat Kalbach has masterminded the Creative Jump Start Summit 2012. I'm excited to be a part of it!

 

Nat says, "Here’s how it works:

• 1. Throughout January we will share videos, audio or pictures to inspire you.
• 2. You sign up for a newsletter HERE and, in January 2012, you will receive a link and the password to unlock the view of the daily materials as soon as they go live.
• 3. You watch the presentations and you will be hopefully inspired to be more creative—all for FREE!

So come on—get inspiration from some of the most creative people in the community."

Fun!

A journal quickie...

There was a pressing from a stencil in the very front of one of my new journals (If you've ever seen my spray ink video, you know I never ever waste ink...if I have an inky stencil, I always press it it onto a journal page, piece of cardstock, tag). I decided to simply write over it...voila, quick journal page.

Sometimes you  just need to get it out...express yourself and move on.

 

I've been digging through pictures...

to find images for the Portfolio section of dinawakley.com. I found this layout that I made for EntreArtistes magazine. Gosh, I love dyed cheesecloth. I need to use it way more often.

 

Don't forget you can join my newsletter. I promise I won't be too annoying...heh.

Big News!

Many of you already know about the changes over at Debbie Hodge's Get It Scrapped. My classes have had a happy, happy home there for a number of years. I adore Debbie & am so glad that she gave me my start in the online class world. We've had a wonderful time!

For the next week, you can get my classes at a discount from Get It Scrapped. Click here for all of the information. You may purchase my classes from Get It Scrapped at 15% to 30% off for the next seven days only.  Smaller discounts will be available after that date--but only until the end of the month. And, then, once January 1st rolls around, they will no longer be for sale at Get It Scrapped.

The new year brings new changes, and in 2012, my classes will be on a new website, dinawakley.com! The site is up now, but is not completely finished (lots still to do actually, eeks!). Feel free to poke around, though. Note that in 2012 some of my classes will be retiring and some will be revised. Our goal is to have some of the classes up & available by January 1st.

Be sure to join my mailing list for all the updated info & news on classes. For 2012 I have lots planned...a revised Introduction to Art Journaling class, new project-based classes...it will be fun! I have a big secret project I will be working on the first quarter of the year, but when that is done, it will be class time!

Also...Be sure to check Tami Taylor's new site, Creative Passion. It's new & sparkly...some of the former GIS teachers are teaching classes there. Tami is a class act and her new site is fabulous.

Questions? Comments? Let me know!

 

Two pages in progress...

Ah, this is always how I work...at least two pages in progress, and surrounded by a holy mess. heh.

What to do when you make an ugly page...

I know I've talked about this before...ugly pages. I've shared my thoughts before. But it bears repeating. We all do it. We all make art journaling pages that we don't like. I do it all the time! This page started out as the bullseye inspiration (from a few posts ago), and it has turned into a hot mess. I did too much to it, and the page lost focus and got muddled.

But I'm okay with that. Really, I am.

Here's my "ugly page" philosophy:

• You're working in your journal. You're not making art to go on museum walls. Give yourself permission to make mistakes, to make ugly pages. I often call them "puke on a page" pages.
• You learn artistic lessons from every page you do. How can you learn and grow as an artist without making mistakes? You can't make amazing art every single time, that's unrealistic. If anything, you learn what not to do again. Or you learn when to stop. Or you learn not to use certain colors together.
• The process is just as important (or even more important) than the finished result. Expression, play, experimentation is the name of the game here. Play and see what happens. If it ends up ugly, oh well. They'll make more paper. Turn the page and start again.
• Sometimes happy accidents happen that you turn around and use to your benefit. You can refine technique, style and try it again and make it work in a different way.

No matter what, don't give up. Keep journaling. Fill up those pages with your soul.

Pouring it into my art journal...

I'm feeling a bit emotional today...so I poured it out into my art journal. One of the things I do is write very loosely, so I get the emotions out but still have some privacy. For this page,I did layered writing. I started the page with inky color. Then I wrote over the page with a dark pencil...poured out my heart. Then I sketched & painted the girl. Next I wrote again, this time with a white Marks All Stabilo pencil. I wrote the white over the dark to give a layered, expressive look. (Sorry for the glare in the pictures...I took them at my desk & the lighting is not the best.)

\

Just felt like drawing last night...

I just felt like drawing last night...I haven't worked in this journal in months (it was at Stampington), but now it's back. I like this size. I need to buy (or make) a new one...there's just something about a large journal that is so fun.

December Jenni Bowlin layouts...

The December JBS kit is lovely...the patterned paper all so interesting and work really well together. Fun!