Happy Friday

Fridays are one of my favorite days.

Karen and I usually meet for coffee and catch up on business and each other.

My family tends to be not-as-slow-to-move on Friday mornings,

 knowing the weekend is just around the corner.

I save my Friday afternoons to work in my studio or read a book.

Today I'm going to "pull" some prints with my Gelli Plate in preparation for my class next month. You can check out those details here.

I get so giddy when my table is piled high with supplies; the possibilities are endless.

Happy Friday!

-Kristi

RIP Maya Angelou

I'm sure you've heard by now that renowned writer and poet Maya Angelou has died.

Her words have spoken to me for many years, in ways I can't explain.

My heart is heavy, but one of my favorite quotes is also singing in my ear.

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"The ship of my life may or not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow.

I am blessed."   

     - from Letter to My Daughter

-Kristi

Art Doodle Love

I've had a lot of trouble doing anything except being out in the sunshine these past few days, but I was able to complete a page in my Art Doodle Love book during our 12 hour Art Play Day last Saturday.

 Here's the page before I started working on it. At first I thought it could be flowers, then smokestacks in a city. It finally came to me where I'd seen this "scene" before.

Here are my poor squashed bugs on the car windshield, with Mary Chapin Carpenter's song lyrics running through their minds. I always feel bad about those bugs, so this is a kind of homage to them.

What are you creating?

-Kristi

Lessons in Lettering

I've been practicing my lettering skills a bit and I thought it would be fun to share a little example of how I created the lettering in my post from last week.

 I began by writing my words in my sketchbook in pencil and then outlining them with permanent ink. 

I added an extra line to each letter where the down-stroke occurs and then went back and filled the spaces in with my permanent pen.

I like this technique because it looks so much like calligraphy without the fancy pen.

 I added a heart and a border.

The blue and red additions are watercolor crayons.

The border squares and dots were created using sharpie pens.

How fun is that?

I'll probably cut this out and use it in my art journal somehow.

-Kristi

Art Doodle Love

I'm continuing to play in my Art Doodle Love Journal.

This latest session required scribbling.

I'm no scribbler. I like neat and tidy lines.

And I often feel that everyone else scribbles better than me.

Whatever.

 Get over it and scribble.

 So I did and I love it.

I might add a little black pen on top here and there.

If you're working in this journal too, or if I've inspired you to begin the journey with me, I would love to see your pages. You can link them up in the comments section.

Happy Mother's Day

This is what's blooming in my yard this morning.

Take a moment today to celebrate whatever type of mothering you do!

And don't forget to enter our Mother's Day Kit blog giveaway.

-Kristi

Leftovers

Here's a recent page from my art journal, created with acrylic paints and pens, and some snippets from old book pages.

It began as a wipe-off page, meaning that when I had extra paint on my brush from other projects, I wiped the leftovers onto this page.

I can't stand the sight of an abandoned dollop of paint just hardening in a puddle. I must find a way to use it!

I like coming back to these "leftover" pages and seeing potential in them.

I think Forrest Gump would agree that art journaling is also like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get!

A Day in the Life

Tomorrow I am planning to join Ali Edwards in a project called “A Day in the Life” where I will spend the entire day documenting my life through photos and words.

Then I'm going to compile all of those delicious details into a mini-book, which I have yet to choose (I will probably end up making my own).

This is a project I absolutely love and I've done it for a number of years, although I have only completed it in  a "Week in the Life” form.

Each time I go back and look at the albums I created during those time periods I am mesmerized by the tiny details I’ve captured.

I think recording one day’s worth of my life will be  a perfect fit; I have tended to burn out by the end of documenting a week because it’s a long time to persevere and sometimes life itself just gets in the way. 

Here’s a look at my albums from 2010 and 2012.

They’re 8.5 x 11 binders I bought at Target and decorated.

This is the layout style I used throughout the 2010 album.

And here’s the layout I used in the 2012 album.

There’s another page of photos and journaling behind each one of these, so each day had about four pages.

I like this style and will probably use something similar to document my day tomorrow.

What do you think? Want to join me?

I'll be posting some of my photos on my personal blog this weekend, and I'll post back here when I've completed the project.
-Kristi

Happy Cinco de Mayo

 

 

Here in the US, Cinco de Mayo is often mistaken as Mexico's Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16.  I read that the modern American focus on the day first started in California in the 1860s in response to the resistance to French rule in Mexico. It is said that Mexican miners far up in the north of California were so overjoyed at the news that they spontaneously fired off rifles shots and fireworks, sang patriotic songs and made impromptu speeches. According to TIME magazine, Cinco de Mayo started to become popular in 1940s America during the rise of the Chicano movement. The holiday crossed over from California into the rest of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s but didn't gain popularity until the 1980s when marketers, mostly those representing alcohol, capitalized on the celebratory nature of the day and began to promote it.

 Hooray for Mexico! I'm so glad you got to be Mexico and not France.

 Around here, I plan to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by sharing that little nugget of history with my husband while sipping on a couple of tasty margaritas.

How are you celebrating?

-Kristi

National Scrapbooking Day

I am practicing my letters with pens and colored pencils on rough sketch paper this morning.

 

I have a new flock of chicks and they are the new background music in my studio.

One of them thinks I'm her mama.

She calls out distressedly until I let her sit on my shoulder and nestle in my hair.

Lettering is something I can work on without disturbing the little one!

Hope you find some time to celebrate your creative side today,

regardless of your circumstances :)

-Kristi

Happy May Day!

 

The practice of anonymously giving paper cones of flowers on May 1 to neighbors and loved ones has a long history, stemming from the European pagan festival of spring, Beltane. Historically flowers were usually delivered by children to adults, an interesting switch since most gift-giving holidays are child-centered. It’s also an astronomical holiday, one of the year’s four cross-quarter days, or day that falls more or less midway between an equinox and solstice – in this case the March equinox and June solstice. The other cross-quarter days are Groundhog Day on February 2, Lammas on August 1 and Halloween on October 31.

 "The job now in hand was May baskets, for it was the custom of the children to hang them on the doors of their friends the night before May-day; and the girls had agreed to supply baskets if the boys would hunt for flowers, much the harder task of the two. Jill had more leisure as well as taste and skill than the other girls, so she amused herself with making a goodly store of pretty baskets of all shapes, sizes, and colors, quite confident that they would be filled, though not a flower had shown its head except a few hardy dandelions, and here and there a small cluster of saxifrage." Louisa May Alcott, from Jack and Jill.

 Share a little flower love today! -Kristi

Creative Color

I love yarn bombing.

 Can you imagine the dedication involved in bombing this tree?

Or what about an entire bus?

Also known as guerilla knitting or kniffiti, yarn bombing is a fairly recent phenomenon of street art that is believed to have originated in the U.S. in Texas as a creative way to give leftover fiber and unwanted projects new life.

How sweet are these little mushrooms happily growing on the back of a wooden bench?

This rancher dyed the wool before it was even sheared. Love it!

Can you imagine your delight were you to stumble upon this barnyard on a lazy afternoon drive?

Here's to color and whimsy. -Kristi