Latest Creative Endeavors

Well.....it's been way too long since I've posted on here and it's not because I haven't been doing any crafty endeavors.  It's just because I couldn't be bothered to write on here about them.  So last summer I signed up for a She Art workshop.  I was all enthused about it for a bit and then seemed to lose my momentum and never finished it.  But I did make a couple pictures and this was my best one.

This is an 8 x 10 canvas.  It really was quite fun and I played around with it a bit and made a couple more, but than got interested in other things.  Now I'm back to it, though, and want to finish all the videos (before my year is up - I get access to them for a year) and do all the techniques and make a book of it.  I got this wonderful machine to bind books called a Zutter and want to make the pages into a book so I can remember all the techniques. 

I have been getting side tracked from doing this, however, by getting into Zentangle.  If you've never heard of Zentangle, it's really just sophisticated doodling.  I've actually been doing this since high school, doodling down the sides of all my notes, but we didn't have such a fancy name for it back then.  This is a little different than that, however.  Instead of doodling down the side of a page, you fill up the whole page (well, I suppose you can doodle down the side too).  Here's my first 2, done on 3.5 x 5" paper and my third on 4.5 x 5.5 paper.  I had a small "Visual Journal" with mixed media paper that I was going to use, but I found that the paper was a little rough for the pen I was using and the ink didn't flow very smoothly.  I have some paper just for ink so I made a little book (with my Zutter) with pages measuring 4.5 x 5.5.  It works much better.

It's something you can just zone out and do.  Although I did make up a little cheat sheet too, with ideas for patterns.  I used a drawing program I have (Corel Draw) to make squares on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper.  Then printed them out and folded the pages in half.  The paper was too thin to use both sides for inking, so I glued two pages back to back to have a folded page for keeping a record of my patters.  Here's a half page so you can get an idea of what I mean.

The half page does have a half inch border all around, but I don't think you can see it in the picture.  I made 1.5 inch squares but, if I had it to do over again, I'd do them in 1 inch.  As you can see, I'll put several different options in some squares.  It's fun to figure out new patterns, but I get a lot of ideas off of the web too.

So there you have it....an update of what I've been up to.  I've done some other stuff too, but will save it for posting another time.  I made the most amazing book using the Graphics 45 Ladies Diary paper and following a tutorial on YouTube.  I need to photograph it, though.  I don't think it will work using the scanner.  So I'll try to get that on some time soon.

That's all for now.  Ta ta.