Feng-Shui and other art stuff

I am finally moving into my new studio....after almost 6 months of living in our new house. But, of course, it's a complete mess. I keep trying to rearrange it so that it works better, but mostly I end-up pushing boxes around the floor and dumping piles of supplies out and sorting through them and finding a perfect little something and deciding that I need to start a new project right now! Only to sit down at my table and find myself distracted by the feng-shui of the room--the massive piles of stuff everywhere and so the process starts all over again.
I have 4 unfinished products sitting on my table beckoning to me but all i see when I go in is the stuff...
I did manage to get another page from my journal done, here it is:


I dyed the lace with some coffee to give it the vintage look, and then I melted some crayons with a heat gun for the top and sunk some postage stamps into it while it was wet. It was my first try with crayon wax....I'm not certain I like it, but I suppose that's how it goes when you try something new.

Crying Over Chicken

Crying Over Chicken, originally uploaded by bmandity05.

I have been super busy this week trying to get everything done for the Heirloom Festival that will be in Indianapolis the first weekend in March. I am teaching 2 classes and it's a bit more involved than my normal teaching. I had to design a seating arrangement of all things! But I've got all my samples done, my instructions typed-up, my class descriptions written, and a thousand other little things that had to be done. I'll be posting the link and the descriptions when they go up on the website.

In the meantime, I got this page done. I used paper, alcohol inks (for the eggs) and bubble wrap and acrylic paint for the orange dots.
I am hoping to have some other stuff scanned in for tomorrow--but I guess we'll see how that goes. I'm still trying to go one horrid step at a time!

Journal Catch-Up

I have been making more journal pages than I can keep-up with posting. So I am going to try and play a little catch-up tonight.
This first picture I used a hand-cut stencil of myself as a child. I got the idea from reading Judy Wise's blog earlier this summer. She had all these gorgeous stencils in her art and I wanted to try it so desperately--but I lacked the proper photo-shop equipment. Since that has been rectified I am a stencil making fiend.

This next page I used some old sheet music that I distressed using the ranger Distress Inks. They have really become my new obsession....I want them in EVERY color! I am especially fond of the colors that aren't in the brown family. The bright oranges and blues are just lovely! The little girl in this photo is my aunt Marie. I used twinkling H2O's to colorize the photo.

And last but not least another page. I used some sand paper and distress inks on the photo. I like the grungy look I got by wetting and crumpling it. I could hardly believe that it was a pristine photo to begin with!
I feel like I'm breaking through some sort of barrier when it comes to my journal. I don't think I'm there yet--I feel a bit like I'm in a room feeling for the light switch, but I know it's near by. I guess I'll just have to see what happens. That's the beautiful thing about art; it always evolves.

Another Journal Page

I finished reading Journal Revolution this week and found it to be inspiring. It's really helped motivate me to keep working. I especially liked the idea of using masking tape to journal on and I tried it out last night. Here is my most recent page:


I used an old time card and some scrapbooking paper, as well as paint and stamps. The photo, I colorized using distress inks. I'm thinking the next time I do that, I'm going to dig my sand paper out and sand off some edges...