Organizing

Keepsake Journal With Organization

~ Patty Radish ~ 2 Comments

You may be wondering when I’m going to write a blog post that doesn’t contain organizational tips. Not anytime soon, I’m still trying to get organized (hard to believe, right)! This project almost went to the wayside, marked Done,  until I scrolled through my photos and realized I still really wanted to keep it going.

These are the times I really want to remember, just the day-to-day fun stuff with some of my favorite people!

Sometimes I’ll add a little journaling to my pages, but not always. The journaling for the photo on the left is under that little tip-in. Anything goes in this journal, it’s just a fun place to hold onto memories.

My biggest problem was having all the bits and pieces spread in different parts of the house. I tried a few options, but this tote really worked out the best. This was my “Random” art journaling tote. I found that a lot of the “randomness” in it worked perfectly with this project, so it wasn’t a difficult shift.

One trick I happened upon was printing the photos with the dates printed at the bottom, super handy! My plan is to work on one month of memories a week until I’m caught up. I’ll toss each month’s ephemera, along with the photos, into this photo keeper until I’m ready to get started.

Because I had put this project on the back burner, it was a bit tricky coming up with some of these fun bits and bobs to art journal with, but I found a few things tucked around my art space. As I run across things, I paperclip them into this insert on the corresponding date, then jot down a note or two.

That library pocket on the right is holding a “To Do” list my daughter made that we were laughing hysterically about. I wrote the date and what we were laughing about on it, then popped it right in (love my pockets!). Many of these are not things I would put in a Project Life album, but definitely fun memories worth keeping and documenting. I hope she re-reads that list one day and laughs all over again!

I jumped ahead date wise with this page spread because I wanted to adhere it to the stronger pages of this journal insert. My grandson made this cute little page, put it up on the wall, then proceeded to tear it off the wall when he was supposed to be napping. I had a hard time rescuing it, but it’s safe now! (Fyi: I think my daughter colored in that flower, he’s more of a sticker boy!)

The little bug-a-boo!

The quality of the photos are not an issue for me with this project, my main concern is to get the memories down before I forget them!

So, there you have it, another bit of my organization. This keepsake journal would still be sitting on a shelf with no hope of getting worked on if I didn’t literally pull it together. Nothing screams procrastination like disorganization in my world.

I hope this post gave you some helpful hints towards pulling some of your sweet memories into a keepsake journal.

No Rules, just get them down!

Thanks as always for the visit,

Have a great week,

~Patty

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

Gratitude Journal Organization

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

Last week, I promised a post about my art journaling organizational process, and here it is a week later! I know, I can hardly believe it myself (insert surprised look!)

First, I’m going to show a little of the art journaling tote I’m using for this project.

 I purchased this tote from Hobby Lobby on a 50% off sale, which made it about $12. It’s got loads of pockets and such, but it’s the plastic photo cases I’m going to talk about today. As you can see I have labeled them, and this is where the “process” comes in. It really saves time on having a pile of ephemera to sort through. As I go through each layer, I know which case to grab. I’ve been using this technique over the last year or so, and it really works for me

First layer “Background” pieces: I like to use these on the scrapbook or painted pages to give them a vintage look. Sometimes, I’ll scrape a little paint over them so that they will “blend” into the background.

2nd layer “Paper pieces”: scrapbook paper, origami paper, photocopies of fabric, anything with color or pattern.

3rd layer “Medium ephemera”: these usually consist of the focal piece along with large die cuts or random images. As you can see, I’m building my layers from larger to smaller.

4th layer “Small ephemera”: tickets, small stickers, die cuts, images.

Finally, “Extra small ephemera”: the usual suspects, only smaller.

After all my layers are built, I go around most of the pieces with pencil for contrast. I use a “General” 8B pencil with a “Helix” cap eraser. I use the paint brush to brush off the eraser bits as not to smear the pencil lines. That pencil sharpener  is a Kum AS2, super awesome!

(I’m not paid for sharing links, I just want to be helpful)

Last but not least, the ink stamping. The date stamp of course, but using my decorative stamps kind of went to the wayside, so I’m trying to get back into the habit.

The finished product, a page of my daughter and I shopping before Christmas.

I hope you can see how I built the layers on this page. There is a video of my process here, I just wanted to share a little of the organizational aspects with you today.

I’ve made quite a few promises to myself this year, writing a weekly blog post being one, but also quality instead of quantity. Two to three art journal pages a week is quite enough, those daily challenges can be a bit daunting.

There are lots of other things I have in the works to scale down, use what I have instead of buying, and using my own ingenuity, I’ll share some of that in my next blog post.

Until then,

Thanks for dropping by,

Have a great day,

~Patty

 

 

A Personal Art Journaling Challenge

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

So, I’m pretty excited about something! (I must be, to be dusting off this old blog to talk about it!) I’ve decided to challenge myself to do an art journaling page a day. I’m not sure how long I will be doing this, but I have been sorely absent from my art room for far too long!

This is what I came up with on Tuesday, kind of a mash up around this cute little sleeping mouse. The point right now is to jump in and get something done, so I’m not worrying too much about composition, especially if there is a time constraint.

This is what I came up with yesterday. Because I am in the middle of trying to get caught up on my Project Life albums, I didn’t have too much time to spend on this. So, what I decided to do was use what I could find on my desk (apparently my desk has some pretty cute things hanging around on it). Actually, these were some discarded bits from yesterday’s  page along with some other junkity junk.

But, this gave me an idea! What if I used all up all the accumulated crap-olla from all the “catch-alls” in and around my art room to work on this project. There are some strange items, so this won’t be an easy task, but at least it will be interesting (to me at least).

This craziness above my desk. I love having a convenient place to pop scraps and such, but some of these have been on here for years, time to dust them off!

This sits next to my desk, I love the randomness these smaller bits give my pages.

And here is what I pulled from every corner of my room, at least what was visible. I’m pretty sure there’s more lurking in drawers and cupboards, but I only have so much strength, this will have to do for now.

I’m hoping I’ll have the time to post an update of the pages I come up with from all this, but my track record hasn’t been very good lately. So, let’s just say I’ll try. I will definitely be posting them on my instagram account eclectic_artjournals

Feel free to harass me into writing a blog post about it, that just might be the nudge I need 🙂

Wish me luck,

Thank you for the visit,

~Patty

SaveSaveSaveSave

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

~ Patty Radish ~ 13 Comments

The past year has definitely taken me places I didn’t foresee. It was around this time last year that I decided I needed to step back from my shoppe and reevaluate why I was doing it. With a lot of prayer and introspection, I find myself not only happy with that decision, but I’m stepping back even more! I’m not closing up shoppe yet, it just isn’t my main focus any more.

So, with the extra time on my hands, I’ve been diving in and taking care of my home, myself, and letting go of pipe dreams.

Pipe Dream: noun; an unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme

Case in point…

img_2045

Isn’t that a lovely scene?

This is the top of my dresser o’ yarn. I had been working on this blanket for a few weeks. I needed to use up some yarn from other projects, and thought I had found the perfect scheme.

The other day, I laid down all the squares I had finished to come up with a plan, and to my horror it was the ugliest blanket I had ever scene! What to do? I had already spent countless hours working on this, looking for inspiration online, plotting, planning, crocheting. I decided to cut my losses and hope that there may be someone else out there that could use a partially finished afghan. Anyway, off to the thrift store it went, along with a few bags of trim, knick knacks, and old books.

img_5409

Redemption!

The next day, I decided that the granny stripe afghan I had high hopes for was a bust also, so I took it apart, gave away the yarn I didn’t like, and started on something new. So far, I’m in love!

I’ll spare telling you how many schemes and projects I have let go of over the past few months. All I know is, I feel tons better. There are so many things I actually need to be doing, and my projects were holding me back!

From things like this…

img_2042

Dog walkies.

This has been calling to me for a long time! Fresh air and exercise. Of course I pick a time of year when the weather is getting rough, but oh well.

img_5321

A photo of my son in Myanmar last month. I stole it from his IG. I just love it!

The most important thing I need to focus on right now are my relationships! I am lucky to say that I have a lot of wonderful people in my life, and I need to put them at the top of my priority list, not just make room for them in my schedule!

I well and truly wish I could do it all, but I’m just not built that way. I will continue to scale down until I can do all that I need to be doing!

img_5352

Art journaling is still on the top of my “must do” list, but I’m spending more time ‘journaling’ than ‘arting’ as you can see. Lately, I have been finding that I really need to organize my thoughts through journaling. This is also a great way to use up old stickers. The washi tape helps keep my writing straight, such a struggle.

img_5373

So, I hope you’ll join me on my journey of scaling down, letting go, and simplifying my life. I can’t wait to share on this blog many of the things I did on my old one like gardening, cooking, makings, and what ever else I’m up to at the time. I will still share my art journals of course, I just think it’s time to share more of my life with you. Hope that sounds good!

Have a beautiful day!

Thanks for stopping in,

~Patty

Collage Gratitude Journal Video and Life Updates

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I hope this doesn’t seem redundant, but yes I have made another video.

IMG_4960It’s a process video of this Collage Gratitude journal, you can see the video here.

Announcing videos seems to be only activity on this blog of late, but I hope to change that up a bit some time soon with some shoppe news along with the occasional life updates.

I’m changing directions slightly on ‘this here blog’ because I share so many photos of my work on other social media, it felt as though I was repeating myself all the time, and I want the content here to be a little different.

Most of what I have been spending my time on lately is catching up on housework and decorating.

IMG_4947This set of drawers and shelf had been sitting naked for almost 20 years, I painted them over the weekend. It feels fantastic to finally get this done!

I’ve been spending the past few weeks going from room to room, making notes of what needs to be cleaned up, finished up, or gotten rid of. So, art making and my shoppe have been knocked down the priority list somewhat.  My house is really starting to look good, and it feels great! Having a laundry list of To Do’s in the back of my mind all the time was cluttering up my brain, and stifling my creativity.

There are still a few more pieces of furniture to paint, a few sewing and crochet projects to finish up, and some decluttering to do, but the more I do the less daunting it all seems.

I hope you don’t mind my switching things up around here. This is where I hope to post pix of my sewing and crochet projects, decorating, and shoppe updates, and keep most the art journaling photos on IG, YouTube, and Facebook. Just give me a follow if you want to see them.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks again for the visit,

Have a great day,

~Patty