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:

My Windsor Page

Over Christmas I didn't have a lot of time to make art - I didn't even have most of my supplies since I was out visiting!  But I did have my homemade Teesha journal.  I had painted the background and glued on the dots.  While I was in Windsor I collected some random bits and pieces and glued them in.  I brought some markers and Sharpie paint pens so I could doodle and write too.

Except when I tried to save some wrapping paper my mom didn't believe I'd really use it.  So I cut out the Santa, pulled out my journal and glued it down right in front of her.  Then I let her look through it plus one of my sketchbooks that I had brought.  She was very happy to look and she complimented some of my drawings.  Then later she surprised me - she let me look through her book!  She's not doing art, but she took a creativity class and the poetry unit struck a chord for her.  So she has a fat journal and she let me read some of her poetry (and it's really good!)  It was kind of unusual for us, but also so good to share.  Maybe next time we hang out we can do more creative things together!

I Could've Shot My Eye Out...

I like to get stressed out for Christmas, but it always ends up that I shouldn't have worried.  I drove to Windsor to visit my family for a few days. The rest of my family all came from various places and converged at my mom's house.  Where we all promptly reverted to childhood:

My brother's Lego dinosaur attacking my Hello Kitty USB drive

One of my brothers brought a pile of random presents - no names, just pick one and open it. I think I got the best one, but I can't post a picture of it because no matter how I arrange it, it just looks strange and kind of kinky!  It's black and yellow and it's made of rubber with a handle and a brace for your arm to fit in.  It took me a few minutes to even figure out what it was - a slingshot!  The package claimed it was a Genuine Daisy and warned me to wear safety glasses and store my ammo separately.  

"Ammo?  Where's my ammo?"

I wandered around the house looking for ammo, eventually settling on a bowl of grapes.  I put them in a bag to take outside and we all started putting on our coats and boots.

Mom:  You can't shoot my grapes from a slingshot!

Jimmy:  No - no - we'll just use rocks

Mom:  Take the grapes...

We walked down to the corner where there's a big parking lot and practiced shooting it.  My oldest brother kept giving me rocks and saying things like "this one's really pointy - it'll go far!"  My sister-in-law high-fived me any time I hit something.  Which, surprisingly, happened quite often!  I didn't want to actually crash anything, so I was just aiming for the fence and the stop sign - and it turned out I have really good aim!  Who knew?  I could have spent my whole life never knowing - I'm really good at slingshot.  Not sure what I'm going to do with this particular talent, but it was a fun way to spend Christmas night!