Hello-o-o-o…

Well, that was weird! It seems that taking a break was a good thing, but now I have some “Splaining to do Lucy!”

Hmmm…where do I start?

First a huge THANK YOU for all the beautiful comments when I said my sad farewell! THANK YOU!!!

Now to explain:

Simply put, things were just a little too crazy when I made that decision, family stuff you know. I had recently gone through some family stuff and tried to keep this all together, and it wasn’t fun. Next time I’ll just take a break.

 I do want to apologize though, I hate being wishy washy, but I’m over the stress hump now, and I’ve realized how large a hole was in my life without all this!

Now to the fun stuff…

I’ve been staying busy in the garden, but have managed to put a little time aside for art journaling. I pulled this one out of the shop because I loves him! So Cute!

I’ve been playing around with some “Back 2 School” ephemera I put together (there are some ephemera packs in my shoppe). So, I thought I would share something I worked on this morning.

A process post, Yay!

Because most people don’t have a Zutter binding machine, and I suck at lining things like this up, I used a regular old hole punch and a pair of scissors to pop this card into my journal. You just punch the holes accordingly, then snip along the edge, and pop it into your journal.

As you can see I prepared it with a few swipes of gesso.

Next, I added some color. I’m keeping the other side of this card intact, I love the retro look of it.

I added a white doily as a background. One thing I like to do is hit the edges with sand paper while it’s still a little damp, it helps seal the edge so that it doesn’t pull up or peal.

Here’s the finished page. I used a #8B pencil to go around the edges of the images.

So, there you have it. That wasn’t too difficult…in other words…next time, just a break!!!

I’m having a few technical difficulties with my blog right now, I’m in the process of working them out. So, I would really appreciate it if I got a few comments letting me know that this actually got to a reader or two.

So PLEASE give me a shout if this makes it to your door!!!

Once again,

Thank you for the visit,

Much Love,

~Patty

(p.s. I’ve filled my shoppe with lots of newness if you want to check it out. Get 20% off your entire purchase with the coupon code CUSTOMERLOVE20 at checkout)

 

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Scaling Down

I’m sure this may not be a surprise to most of you, but I have finally come to the conclusion that it is time to walk away from this blog. In some ways it’s sad, but in another way,  it feels wonderful to move on.

I’m finding that I have too many personal and family commitments to be able to keep up, and its time to pull back on some of my online obligations. This also includes my shoppe. I’ve closed it up and will start packing up my journal making supplies for the duration. If I do decide to sell journals and journaling supplies, it will most likely be on my pattys_artjournals Instagram account.

I will continue to populate my art journaling photos from IG to my Facebook page, newly renamed Patty’s Art Journals.

So, if you are still interested in seeing my art journaling photos, follow me here:

pattys_artjournals 

If you would like to see my latest handcrafting and gardening projects, follow me here:

patty.radish

…and if your interested in my faith journaling journey, you can find me here:

faith_in_bloom

I’m clearly unable to create without sharing, mostly because I love the sense of community it creates, and I will definitely miss you if you don’t participate on Instagram. But if yo do…I’ll see you there!!!

 

As always, thank you for stopping by,

Thank you to everybody that has followed me through the years,

Have a great day,

~Patty

A Personal Art Journaling Challenge

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

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Hearth and Home

Hello, I thought I would pop in quickly to let you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth 🙂 I have been keeping super busy with personal life stuff and not much art journaling, so I didn’t quite know what to share. Lately, I’ve been enjoying diving into working around the house, visiting with family, taking time to talk on the phone, all the things that I used to think  “I had to make time for” because I was trying to “Run a shoppe”. I’ve not been this happy since my kids were little!

It’s the small things that make me smile, like finally getting to some decorating done in my laundry room. I will be painting that chest of drawers when I make up my mind about color. I have a long list of projects I want to do around the house, and I am finally ticking them off.

At the end of the day I work on this, it’s coming along quite nicely.

It’s that time of year again. This was two days of hard labor to pull up some unsightly ground cover that looked ratty and made a nice home for weeds to grow. We still have a few more things to move and remove here, but progress is happening.

On the news front, one of my journals was chosen to for the next issue of Art Journaling magazine, it should be out this summer. I didn’t write my article on this little beauty of course, this was just a nice excuse to share a recent gift.

This has been my latest obsession, Ali Edwards “Week In The Life” project. I had joined up last spring when my son was visiting from Korea, and I took loads of photos, but it didn’t get any farther than that. So, I decided to do a trial run with the photos from his visit before my niece arrives for her annual visit. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to look through all the photos and remember and our little adventures together. But, I’ll have to put this on hold until after my niece flies home. She and I will be filling in a couple of these albums documenting her visit, I can’t wait!

That’s it for now. I’ve signed up for the iHanna Post Card Swap again, so hopefully I will share about that this week some time.

Until then,

Have a wonderful weekend,

~Patty

A Yarny Yarn

Once upon a time, there was a Granny Stripe afghan. It grew, and it grew, until it was too long for it’s new home…so it was *frogged.

*frogged: a frog says “rip it rip it” and fogging refers to unraveling rows of knitted, or crochet, work due to an error found.

So, it was turned back into yarn balls, then into yarn seedlings…

They grew and grew…

…and turned into granny squares, and more granny squares.

They all joined together to become a happy family!

…to be continued…

Have a great week!

~Patty