The Power of Introverts

So I've heard about TED talks before - in fact I've even started watching a few.  But this is the first one I've ever actually watched all the way through.  Susan Cain is amazing!  Now I really want to read the book - but I'm number 177 on the waiting list for the ebook from the library.  Should I just cough up the $17 for the Amazon Kindle version?

Pulled Page

Another page from Lifebook - This class was taught by Mystele
She showed how to put down the background then you look at it to find the symbols and features you want to pull out.
She said you'd probably find your recurring themes or symbols - but I don't have anything like that. Except - as soon as I looked the little boat was right there dead center! I'm not sure what it means, but it was a fun page. And it was extremely liberating to not have to line up the eyes!

Lifebook Page

I've been kind of doing Lifebook. I say "kind of" because I haven't done all the lessons so far. Some of them were really good, but some were just "meh". This one was easy - I just followed what Tam did. Except for the quote and the pinkness of it, mine is pretty much exactly like she showed it.

Done Hibernating!

I think winter might be over - hoping anyway!  I spent the last month mostly staying inside doing stuff around the house.  I did a huge spring clean and painted my bedroom peachy pink.  My favourite project was the spare room - I think I can officially call it my studio now!  It had turned into kind of a junk room so it took a while to clean and clear it.  Once it was all sorted I took off the closet doors and hardware and put some ikea shelves up in the cubby that was left.  Now I'm left with floor to ceiling arty goodness!

The before picture

After a trip to Ikea

Another Girl

I'm still working on the Supplies Me course - I'm on pastels week, but I don't have any. So I just did the drawing with colored pencils & acrylic paint.

I forgot to draw her feet, though. So I just covered the bottom with a border!

Mexico Journal

I guess I'm not a complete slacker - I did make a journal while I was on vacation.  I didn't think there'd be much ephemera, but I do like to write down what I do each day so I got a 5x7 coil bound book.  I didn't want to start completely blank, so before I left I painted some backgrounds, stuck down some borders, ribbons and bits and pieces.  I brought scissors, glue, Sharpie paint pens, some random black markers and a pile of coloured pencils.  I also had an envelope with a few images, buttons and pieces in it.  It worked out perfect because the book and my pencil case fit in my beach bag so I could just pull it out and fool around in it whenever the mood struck.

Of course, I pasted in my boarding pass, plus I ended up with a stack of tourist pamphlets so I cut out pictures and words that I liked and stuck them in too.

I had to keep pretending I lost the paper with our dinner reservation - because I wanted to paste it into my book:

Some stuff I just liked, so I pasted it in:

Some pages were maybe not so artistic, but very fun.  My mom tried to learn Spanish from watching the weather channel.  (I tried to learn it from the cute lifeguards, but that's another story entirely.)
So I passed her the book and she wrote down all the Spanish she knows for me:

I'm Back

My new year's resolution was to blog more - at least three times a week. So far I suck at it. But I do have a really good excuse! First it was the holidays, then I went away for a week.
Now I'm back and I can work on all my resolutions. Including the one to make more art. For now though, I have a new happy place: