AEDM Project 3 Reach For the Stars Journal Page

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a wonderful and creative weekend!

I actually found myself out of the studio most of the weekend but still fit in creative adventures in other ways. I think so often we feel it either has to be a 5 hour session or it's not studio time. Or even it has to be in the studio to be creative.  At least that had been my mindset for awhile until I realized at some point that unless I got out and did other things in the world (some relating back to art, some not), that my 'well' quickly dried up.     Saturday we took a drive up to Raleigh and checked out the World of Art show at the convention center. It was quite interesting to me,  there was a huge amount of contemporary and fine art from around the world.  Big pieces, sculptures, paintings, book arts, watercolors..and everything in between. 

The prices on some of the work was a sticker shock to me. It just showed me that I have a long way to go before I've really 'made' it.  However, as soon as I say that I want to stop myself and say that success wears many hats and is not the same for everyone. I feel successful in that I have art around the world in private collections.  Maybe not a ton..but it's out there.  :)  And it's also gratifying to know I've had the good fortune to teach other aspiring artists around the world both online and in person.  

The more I think about what direction I want to go in and what steps I need to do to get there, I just know that "There is no Maybe".  You can do whatever you set your mind to.

The road you take may not be the one you intended on taking but just as long as  you keep moving forward and continue to "Reach For the Stars" you will achieve great things.

Certainly you will achieve many more things than if you never had tried at all. And I'm not just talking about art...it's whatever you desire to do.  It could be running a marathon or writing a book,  changing careers, or buying that dream home in the mountains or along the beach.

Take the steps necessary to start working towards whatever it is you desire.

Sounds simple enough, and it is. Not to say it's easy, there's a difference between simple and easy.

Most good things that you want to do or achieve require hard work and even some sacrifices.

But it's worth it in the end.

Yes.

I just started thinking about all of this and more while immersing myself in the journal page. I had previously sprayed some ink through stencils and added some Twinkling h20s to the page. Preparing journal background pages ahead of time is a great way to just grab and go when you have a chance. Rather than starting at ground zero, you already have a good head start.

 

And then simply just do whatever comes to mind. It may be collage work, it may be doodling. Or a combination of everything.  

My themes sort of manifest themselves based on whatever it is I'm feeling or thinking at the time.

Sometimes I don't even realize xyz is on my mind until I start going.

It's all about being open and not afraid and just starting.

 It is very possible. Trust me, I know. I'm doing things today I'd never imagined I'd be doing 4 years ago.

Have fun on your own journey.   Don't look back unless it's to see how far you've come:)

Artfully Yours,

Jodi

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Have you checked out my new online class?  It's not too late to join, stop by and see what it's all about:

Art Everyday Month Project 1

Good Morning!
I just wanted to share one of my first blog friends  big event which occurs every November,  "Art Everyday Month". Leah is great and very inspiring and I've been following her throughout the last 6 or 7 years.   She has been managing this event where people can share projects every day throughout November on her blog "Creative Everyday".  Your art doesn't have to be over the top, nor do you really have to do it everyday.  However, I can guarantee that when you make an effort to sit down at least 10-20 minutes everyday, you will feel inspired, maybe even compelled to do more. Extra bonus,  you will see yourself evolve!

I pretty much do art everyday, but what I don't do...is art that just is what it is. It's not to sell or not for a project.  I may not be able to do 'just cuz art'  everyday but I'm hopeful I can add more of it into my routine.  I'll share as much of whatever I'm doing this month, too!

So here are my doodles created on a 9x12 mixed media paper using stencils to create a pattern, then I doodled within the patter.  EZ, right?   Great TV/Couch play.

Grab your sharpies and create your own!

I used a sharpie that had both the thin tip and thicker one on either side...quite handy when your space is limited or you are on the go and can only take a few supplies with you.

Whenever I am doing doodles like this, I challenge myself to make each area different.   It keeps things interesting but even more so, it challenges me to keep inventing (and I don't mean I invented the pattern) new designs for each of my areas.

Not the greatest picture because...you guessed it. Still on the couch relaxing and took the picture from my lap.  Hey. It's Saturday. Don't judge;)

Same time, same place...see you tomorrow!

Jodi

Join Art Everyday Month HERE

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Have you seen my new class that just opened?  It's not too late to register and join in!

Morning After Day One Challenge: Letterific!

Happy Thursday Friends! 

Today's the official first day of my challenge to work in my journal and post on my blog "The Morning After"  and I have to admit it was hard for me today to muster up the energy to finish my pieces from the night before because...well....I had a big time last night celebrating my birthday with a friend of mine. Just being honest.  LOL    Normally I don't go out during the week but it sounded like a good plan and since I'm the boss and I hardly take any days off....I said what the heck and I'm glad I did because I had a lot of fun and it was good to get out of the studio and talk to someone other than myself!  

So my project for the last couple of weeks has been to work through the alphabet, creating funky black and white doodle letters. I completed letter O and P yesterday::

My goal is to finish all of the letters before the end of December and then to work through doing bigger pieces in color on watercolor paper and use those to sell in my Etsy shop.  I think they would be so cute to hang up in your studio or to offer as custom orders.  What do you think?  If you are stuck on a subject to work with in your journal, why not try working through your own alphabet and see where it takes you.  I bet you'll have a blast and love the ideas that come to you. Try to challenge yourself to make up new patterns of your own or create different patterns with each letter.   When I'm stuck for inspiration, I go to this site and peruse the designs:   Tangle Patterns

Just for a little color I wanted to show you a separate page I did on Tuesday. I have another goal of working through a big canson watercolor pad 11 x 15 with all separate pages of doodle designs.  Once finished I may send them in to get published...who knows what will happen, right?  What's the worse that could happen? They are going to either say yes, or say no..and if you don't try at all....it's a definite no!  That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it!

Window Shopping:

 I totally get how busy this time of year is so if you are too busy to play along every day, no worries. If you can take ten minutes out to journal each day and that is it....FANTASTIC...it's better than nothing at all.   I have a ton of things to do today and I got a late start so I'm going to close by saying this--have no fear when creating, even your biggest mistakes can turn into the best opportunities.   Just do it.

xoxo Jodi

Freestyle in Progress Art Every Day 23

How does one go from this......




To this...and still keep on going...layering, layering and more?

You just do!
Freestyle Doodle Graffiti :)   I'm still working on this but it's getting late so I'm going have to put the paint away and dream of what else I can do to this fun crazy silly piece.   So what if Turkey day is Thursday and the queen of this palace has done little more than gone grocery shopping??  It'll all get done in good time.  Life has a way of working itself out.  So do paintings.  If you work at them, solve the problems, correct your strokes, life begins to breathe into the piece and it takes off on its on. I really can't say the same about the turkey, but that will get done to.  Us women have a way of multitasking that few can understand and even less dare to attempt ;)

Persist and you will conquer!

That Happy Place Art Everyday Month Day 15

Let's face it...Mondays are rough on most people. I know for me they are draining.  This week,  I had a great 4 day weekend...but ughhh to come back to work and be faced with lots of to-dos that need to be done yesterday and some not so great news performance wise for our team, it makes you want to run back to the safety of the weekend QUICK. :)  It's all good though because that which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger, right?

Which brings me to my creative mojo post of the day.  Knowing that I'm drained and tapped out of ideas and energy....I'm really not feeling pulling out my paints and setting myself up tonight to create on my canvas, but I do want to escape somehow someway and hopefully find a little teensy bit of relaxation so that my energy can seep back in all the pores it sweated out of today. 

What to do?

Doodle.

It's Fun

It's Relaxing

and not a whole lot of  material investment to get started.

Paper...Pens...and perhaps a pencil...if you are really adventurous then heck, bring on the colored markers and watercolors.  Today just used the basics which included my new JOURNAL  courtesy of the Strathmore company for doing a demo for them on Saturday at the Art of the Carolina's.  (I actually got a few journals for my time...yippee!!)  (check out Jerry's for a great price on these journals btw)

I'm watching my fav shows on A&E...Intervention and Hoarders (my guilty Monday night voyuerish pleasures) while doodling this evening.

Before I knew it....walahhh....I have a mini illustration.

I'm feeling a little less stressed and a little more hopeful that tomorrow will be a better day.

I like happy art....maybe it's because when I'm stressed and feeling ill....I like to delve into happy colors, fun patterns, positive messages-it all gives me hope.   Moody reflective art has it's place too...and I do have a few pieces that show that side of me but by and large, I like to create things that take me to that 'happy' place where anything is possible.  Even a place that has a skyline of bubbles, and sidewalks paved with flowers. If you explored a place like that, I'm sure it would make you smile, too.  

If you only have a few minutes today to create, go back to your childhood carefree days of doodling on your notebook with anything you had in front of you and just get lost in the process.  

One thing I am doing differently as of today (lol)...is that I'm using this new journal as a place for all of my doodles or at least dedicating this journal to the wonderful world of childlike escape.

Go ahead and capture a moment of whimsy and make believe by doodling. 

I guarantee it will bring you to that happy place you've been looking for :)

Taking Control of the Clutter

I'd thought I'd share tonight my newest prototype for some illustrations I want to do. I haven't quite decided if I want to do them in pencil, pen, watercolor, marker--or what so this is just a practice picture but one that I want to expand on in future "collections". I made this "Doodle Girl" using pen and colored pencil--but I really think watercolors would have worked too. Maybe working in every medium is just fine too, that's what I have been doing lately anyway!

I'd like to work more in collections or themes but not sure if that's possibe right yet as I'm loving trying everything. Most of the time you can spot a particular artist by the style of their work, a musician by the sound of her voice, a guitar player through the his unique riff, a drummer by his beat. I'm not sure if I have my voice or beat just yet but perhaps my style is evolving.

Jane commented (sooo sweetly) on my last post, that I should look back and see how far I've come in the 7 months that I've been doing this so I did just that tonite. I reorganized my pictures and uploaded them to flickr and I think I have them pretty close to the order I've created to them in my
collage set. Please check it out and let me know what you think so far. It does make me feel better seeing how far I've come despite my own personal adversity.

Speaking of that--thank you all for the sweet and empowering comments you left me from my last post. It does make me feel much better to know I have several people out there that are cheering from the sidelines when I need it :)

This weekend I had a need to reorganize things a bit. I had a collection of boxes and packing material for my swaps and etsy sales sitting in a corner of my bedroom and that collection kept growing and growing. I'd lay down at night and it would glare at me from the corner it was housed so I finally broke the boxes all down and stashed them in a somewhat empty closet out of sight. Phew--major improvement. Your bedroom is supposed to be your santuary but it was become a warehouse!

I then moved on to my book shelves. I have a three piece built in with two cupboards in the center that sits in the corner of my living room. At yard sales over this last year I have bought a ton of books (I said bought...not read ;), I also had been given a bunch over this year between cookbooks and regular books, childrens books----books books books. EVERYWHERE. In addition, I bought 114 National Geographic magazines for my collages at a yard sale for 10 cents each. Those were sitting in a box by my couch and another box in my dining room. I had no where to go with them with only 3 closets here, no attic, no basement, no shed--so I had to figure out something. So..bookshelf cleaning I did. I tore out everything, put several up for a "future" yard sale and reorganized my knick knacks on the shelves making room for all the magazines. Phew--those two projects alone took me 4-5 hours. Then came Josh's room---did the same thing with his bookshelf and we got rid of a bunch of things, set some aside for sale, and reorganized what was left. 5 pm Sunday---finally done. What a blessed project! You have no idea how good I feel though now that it's done! Oh, I forgot, I also reorganized my "dining room studio"..LOL..Hopefully come Thanksgiving I will be able to see my table (because I'm having guests), I really have no choice which is a good thing. Sometimes I need a little motivation.

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The moral of the story is, when things spiral out of control or you have a lot of negative vibes screaming at you, even if it's coming from inanimate objects, it may be best just to remove that negativity. Don't procrastinate because it will eat at you until it destroys you! Yes, pile ups of books, boxes, paints, papers, can destroy you....LOL..or at least hamper your creativity or dampen your motiviation.

I'm reenergized now--so much I even colorized my 12x12 paper tonight.. LOL Whooooohoooooo call me crazy!

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Have a great week!

lucy

Got Junk?

The Junk Stops Here :)

Looky here at all the fun "junk" I received for the "JUNK SWAP" I participated in hosted by Shara of Monkeybox. My lovely gifts (all fun items I would hardly call junk!) were from Miss Electric Bluebird, Merrill. Merrill also has a new etsy shop with some wonderful baby afghans and more, go check her out when you have a chance, her prices are right, her selectin is nice, and the quality looks wonderful! The top picture features a variety of vintage drawing books, which are just perfect for me. I am not very good at drawing people or faces so these are going to be major study guides in my art. Another book features Still Life which is more me, although my work tends to be on the dreamy kinda mystical side when I do watercolors, it all starts with a still life of some sort.

Moving on to the next batch of items, Miss Merrill sent some comics for DSand a vintage book, and an orginal painting by my swap partner. Love it, I have it hanging in my craft room already :) I actually received 2 skeins of this ribbon yarn, as well as the lovely variety of yarn and wool featured below
Also included were some wooden craft blocks, a big paintbrush and some heavy duty trim.

Last but not least, we have a huge variety of beads, jewelry, soap, a sudoko pocket card game (I've never seen them this size!),several key chains and a funky hand made bracelet I just love!
Thank you very much Merrill for all my goodies, I really had fun with this junk swap :)



On to my daily doodles. Vallen recently had a
post that featured dress forms on fabric which she made into a funky tote. I teased her that the fabric designer must have stolen my idea! Seriously, I made these dress doodles thinking they'd make cute mini paintings.

Betchya didn't know that I used to want to be a fashion designer when I was a wee one. I think I went through that phase when I was in 6 th grade. I was for sure going to be a major force in the design world according to my own accounts back then. I would draw figures and outfits all the time...but somewhere along my journey I had forgotten about that desire, until the other night when I was doodling in my effort to hold true to my commitment to do something, anything, every day, no matter what.






Girly girl....Hello, can anyone hear me??
The trouble with creating
Sometimes no one listens
but yourself
and that's
good
enough
for
me.

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Swap news, be sure to check out my sidebar for a link to our newest Sweet Goodness Swap:
Summer Bucket full of Sunshine Fun Swap!
Sign ups through June 15th, so hurry don't be late!
We have over 50 particpants so far, and room for more!!!
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Lucy