Hug Me!

Guess what time it is?

Mudbug Madness!

In honor of the upcoming festival, I drew this in my journal today.

Upsies?

Stuff-ness

Wow, it's been a while since I posted about my Wreck This Journal journal. But I have been working on it, though not as diligently. But I thought I'd share some pics of how it is evolving.

Write or Draw With Your Left Hand

Hmm, not so hard if you are a lefty. Anyway, it was easier than I thought (and turned out more legible than I thought) but it still made me think way too hard about how to make my hand work to write the letters properly. Or properly-ish.

Doodle Over Top This Page

I doodled! But it is a little hard to see because I colored the other side of the page in with a thick permanent marker - which was lots of fun and makes me enjoy this page greatly because I hate bleed through so this page seems rebellious to me. Get back.

Tear Strips Rip It Up!

Not all that visually appealing (hey, not all of them can be!) but it sure was fun to do! I didn't even follow the lines!

I've also branched out into journaling without direction. Go me! Most of that I won't share because it's mostly me writing - about my dreams (which have been really weird lately), venting, and sometimes just babbling. But honestly, pictures wouldn't be all that thrilling - besides, you pretty much get that reading this blog.

One thing I have been attempting to do (and will share) is learn to draw. I say learn because I suck. Dead plant anyone? My biggest challenge is shading. But hey, you can't get better if you don't practice, right? So I thought I'd share my first two attempts at entertaining myself through drawing.

Nibby

First time drawing a cat. Okay, his eyes are uneven, his feet are just weird and he looks like an anime-kitty, but you can almost tell who it is supposed to be so I consider it a win.

Swine Flu

Inspired by last night's news. Poor little piggies are getting a bad rap. Sadly, this poor drawing won't improve their street cred any, but for my first piggy ever, I thought it was pretty good. And he makes me smile.

Ta da! My journaling goodness.

Journally Goodness

I haven't put too much up about my "Wreck this Journal" journal lately. I admit, I've fallen down on doing it in the past month or so. But I have still been working on it, just slower. And there are a number of pages that I've done but haven't posted. So I thought I'd share them today. This isn't all the pages I've done lately, just the more photogenic ones.

The Cover has changed just a bit

Collect Fruit Stickers Here (I eat a lot of cherry tomatoes!)

Collect Your Pocket Lint (I've added Kitty Hair from the floor, too).

Glue Random Things Here (still in process)

Trace Things In Your Bag

Cover This With White Things

Not the prettiest pages, but still fun. I still am enjoying my journal!

Ugly Art or Ugly Subject?

I maintain that I have little in the way of artistic talent. But apparently I remembered a thing or two from my high school art classes because this journal page didn't turn out near as stick-figure-ish as I had anticipated.

Do A Really Ugly Drawing...

The subject of these drawings was a dead/dying hibiscus that I have on my back porch. I've had a horrible time this summer keeping it alive (it has never recovered from being pot-bound and then the shock of replanting) so I have decided to be merciful and just let it die. Eventually, I will get another one and try to make it live longer than two years.

Anyway, even though it looks horrible on my porch, it made a great subject for the ugly drawing. And yes, I drew it twice. The first picture (on the right) was one that I drew from memory (though my mental image was obviously off - I had even forgotten that I repotted it from the basketweave planter to a barrel-slat-ish planter). Anyway, I was content with how the drawing turned out considering my aforementioned lack of artistic talent, a spotty memory as my model and the fact that it was, you know, of a dead plant. But there was still this whole blank page on the left....

So I drew it again. This time, I took a picture of the plant and put it up on my laptop screen while I drew it. Yes, I could have gone out to the porch and used the "live" *ahem* model, but dude. Freakin' hot. So no, I couldn't have.

Anyway, for a dead plant, I think the second drawing turned out pretty well. Obviously I remembered something from my old art classes (though honestly, all I remembered was shading - and I even messed that up a little but it looks so much better before I did the (slightly off) shading to it so woo hoo!).

But all in all, this exercise has been fun. And the fact that my sketches (both of them) while not perfect were at least recognizable as dead plants make me more positive about the next craft I have gotten into my head I want to try: watercolors.

No seriously. I have the urge. So I'm going to see what I can do. Though right now, I'm reading a book to try to figure out what I need to get so I can see what I can do. If anything comes of it, I'll post more.

Until then, you can see the dead plant that was my model.

My Lovely Muse

Look! I Did Something!

More journal stuff was done today. Well, one page at least.

Nail Polish Paperchain

First, I painted the strips with nail polish, then cut them up and made the chain. Woo hoo.

So much nail polish, I feel a little high.

Backlog of Journaling

I have been negligent! Not that anyone, I'm sure, enjoys my journal as much as me, but I haven't posted my most recent journal pages and have decided to remedy that. So here we go:

Drip Something Here... Close the Book and Make a Print

This is toothpaste, paint and nail polish. I've tried to see a picture in it (like those ink blot tests) but no luck. I just look at it and think, "Whee! Toothpaste!"

Something like Tear This Page Out, Put It In Your Pocket, Wash It, and Put It Back In the Journal

Yeah, so I tried to follow the directions but my washing machine ate it. Seriously. It went in but didn't come out. A few tiny bits showed up later in the dryer lint catcher but the bulk of it went poof in the wash.

Of course, this isn't the first thing the washer has eaten. A towel got caught under the agitator a while back and was torn all to heck. Yet another reason I want a new washer.

Anyway, I was quite sad the page went poof, so I made a new one. I'm actually pretty fond of it.

Color Outside the Lines

Well, the original line was the circle and I colored all over it, deliberately overlapping the line. Then I sort of created lines once the page was colored in. I drew the lines over the area where the colors merged, but the color edges still overlap and poke out from under the lines. Then I lightly painted over the coloring. Anyway, it's messy and colorful and nothing is precise and I think it is fun!

Sew This Page

I had the plans of sewing a lot more of this page, but honestly, I'm a slow sewer (that certainly doesn't look right) and I don't know that many fun stitches. But I thought this was nice. I withhold the right to do more sewing on it, though.

And that is some of my recent journal fun-ness.

Color Shower

Okay, this journal has yet again taken my out of my comfort zone. Yesterday, I went to Michael's and picked up some cheapy paints and brushes to play with, even though I've never painted anything more than a wall so very much not a medium I'm comfy with. But I got them and decided to use them for this page:

Color This Entire Page

The colors are a little better in person - more soft and minty - but this still give you a good idea of it. Anyway, lots of fun painting - I'm gonna have to use the paints in the journal more!

I also did another page in the journal today.

Bring This Book In The Shower With You

I didn't flip through the book while showering (like Dan wanted me to do) but I did my normal shower routine while the book was in a less-than-safe-from-soap-and-water location. Several pages got wet, including my lovely glue drawing. Also, the ink on a few other pages I've done (including the office supplies page) bled a little, and I actually think it added to the loveliness of that page.

Though, if I am to "work against my better judgment", I think I'm going to have to tear up one of my completed pages since getting the glue drawing page wet made me sad. Kind of misses the point of well, wrecking the journal if I'm going to be sad when something in it gets messed up!

Office and Glue

Cover This Pages Using Only Office Supplies

Whee! What fun! Today, when my attitude got a little grumpy, I did a page from my journal and this was one of them. Yes, it is another page that I kinda adore. Okay, I really adore it.

The other page I did today was this one:

Draw With Glue

Okay, so it is using glue and highlighter, but when the glue dried, I wanted something that stood out a little more and rubbing highlighter on my fingers and then smearing it over the dried glue ended up pretty neat (I thought).

Besides, I already had one finger stained blue from other highlighting adventures on another page, so I figured why not? Now two of my fingers are blue (well, one blue, one kind of teal). They make me smile.

Dinner Journal

More journal fun.

Document Your Dinner. Rub, Smear, Splatter Your Food. Use This Page as a Napkin.

I don't know why, but I'm quite attached to this page. And dinner was pretty good, too!

Colorful Monday

Wow, I've been blogging a lot lately, haven't I? And what fluffy posts they have been, too. Ah well, that's not going to change today.

More journal goodies today.

Fill This Page With Circles

Isn't this pretty? Remarkably, this page caused me all sorts of trouble. At first, I had trouble doing different sized circles. And I wanted to space them evenly. And then I didn't want to make them overlap. And then I didn't want to make circles of the same color overlap each other. And then I debated the meaning of the word "fill". But, the biggest problem I had was this:

Bleed-through!

NOOOOOO! This almost made me stop. I hate bleed-through. Hate hate hate. But then, the book instructions do say "5. Experiment. (Work against your better judgment.)" So I did different sized circles, unevenly spaced, with all colors overlapping. And I started to search out pens that would give me bleed through (there's a good Sharpie-bleed-through on the pages to the other side). Sadly, the paint pens I had didn't bleed through. Otherwise I could have gotten some neat green and brown along with the red and black bleed-through.

One more page that I did that I had to work against my better judgment (though by this point, I was on a roll so it was fun).

Draw Lines With Your Pen or Pencil. Lick Your Finger and Smear the Lines.

I decided to use pastel pencils, I did not do a color pattern to the stripes, I did two stripes of the same color side by side, I tried not to space them evenly, and I made some of the lines overlap. And then licked my fingers and smeared it all up.

I think it turned out pretty awesome. And it enabled me to work on another page with the directions "This Page Is For Handprints or Fingerprints. Get Them Dirty Then Press Down."

Whee!

I'm having fun with my new journal. I made for a nice break while scrapbooking and is really - well, fun! Dangit, I need to look "fun" up in a thesaurus for future posts.... Anyway, here are a couple more pages.

Write One Word Over and Over

Okay, I'm sure there is no surprise that I picked "monkey" to write over and over. Or that I started with pink ink. But this was actually difficult to do - I had to force myself to write over previously written words. But doing that a few times seemed to open the floodgates and I decided I had to switch colors and do different sized text, etc. I think the page turned out rather pretty.

Chew On This

Okay, this was just fun. A little bit of the page was actually chewed off, but I taped it back... Cause I think it is funny to have the chewed up "this" there vs. it just being chewed off. This page makes me smile.

Journaling

I got a journal yesterday and I'm really excited about using it. It's not the typical "write your feelings" journal. This one is called Wreck This Journal and was actually in the craft section of Barnes & Noble.

My New Journal

The pages of the journal each have different directions on them - all directions that lead you to basically wrecking the journal.

Not surprisingly, this journal is dedicated to perfectionists. Of course, who else would need rules about destroying a book?

Ironically since this is all about ultimately destroying the journal, my instinct was to buy the book in the best condition. Yeah, Dan made fun of me.

Anyway, I've done a couple of pages in it - it's lots of fun!

Burn This Page

This is the first one I did. Dan watched me as I light the page on fire over the sink (yes, I know most people might take it out of the book before burning, but I want to record the destruction of the book page by page as much as I can). Anyway, I was giggling like mad while doing this and Dan was even laughing. It was fun to do!

Another page I did which I think turned out really well and actually kind of pretty was this one:

Poke Holes in this Page Using a Pencil

Anyway, lots of fun. (Geez, I keep saying "fun" - but it is!) I can't wait until I get to the "Chew on this Page" page!