Posting even though I don't have much to say

I had plans to have a really great post about how I'd cooked a bunch of stuff so I could get back to eating well. That didn't exactly happen. I did go to the store yesterday and buy stuff to cook. I bought a pack of chicken breasts I was planning to marinate and grill, but realized today that they never made it to the fridge last night, and I don't think I want to cook chicken that's been sitting out at room temperature overnight. I'll still make the veggies I was going to make, and I think I have some burger patties in the freezer and maybe some sausages, so I'll use that, but it's disappointing because the chicken just really sounded good.

Not really a lot going on here. I have a ton of stuff I need to do, and no desire to do it, but I'm sure eventually I'll get it all done.

Art Journaling Class

This weekend, I got to hang out with art friends and make stuff and laugh and just generally have a great time.

We went to a new place out in Colleyville, The Wild Nest. If you're in the neighborhood there, stop by and check it out -- I could have easily just wandered around looking at all the stuff on the walls for an hour or more.  I'm not very good at remembering to take pictures, but a few things that caught my eye include:

This chair.

This whole area -- the peacock statue, the collaged mirror frame, the chair, the painting, the colors, all of it.

And this light fixture, plus the fun, brightly colored picture frames hanging from the ceiling.

And there was so much more. I was so busy looking at all the stuff, I just forgot to get pictures of it. It was all colorful and artsy and fun and made me want to redecorate my house.

Anyway, the class was taught by the fabulous Jenn McGlon of Noodle & Lou, who talked about finding inspiration for your art journal from old photos and books and showed us how to do a collage page, and we learned a bit about lettering from Cindy Mayfield of Yapping Cat Studios, who does really cool hand lettering. I didn't get pictures of anyone else's stuff, but a few were posted on Instagram under #artgirlsjournal.

Here's what I worked on:

Cindy taught prettier lettering than that, but this is the best I could manage. The part on the right is collaged scrapbook paper and a face image from Tumblefish Studios. Lettering was done with a Pitt big brush pen, dots added with a white Uniball Signo pen.

This girl with her camera was copied from a picture in Flow magazine -- I cheated a little, tracing her on tracing paper to get the basic outline down, but added background, frame, and the roses down the side. I still feel like it needs something, but I'm not sure what.

And the cover for my journal -- It needs something too, I just kind of glued some stuff down, and then covered some of the papers with an iridescent blue ink, just because I didn't like the way they looked. I love the ink, but I'm still not really happy with the cover. I'll figure out a way to fix it sometime.

I love being able to take classes like this and hang out with really cool people and just play with art supplies and learn new things. It's always inspiring just to be around everyone and see what everyone does.  Anyone around the Dallas area looking for this kind of class or group should go like the Art Girls Facebook page to get notifications of upcoming classes in the area.

General update

So, in keeping with my commitment last post to post twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays, here's a quick post, not crafting related.

Last night I stayed up too late reading The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King, the latest in her series of Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes stories. It's been a long time since I've read a book that really pulled me in and I couldn't stop reading. I'm working on Outlander, but it just hasn't been like that for me. It's not even that I'm not enjoying it, but it's not un-put-down-able, although that may be as much about me as the book -- I've had trouble focusing on much of anything lately, and just not been in the mood to read, which is really weird for me.

Anyway, The Murder of Mary Russell. I can't say a lot about it because spoilers, just in case someone reads this who hasn't read it yet, but I did enjoy it. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, but I'm trying to stay open minded and wait to see where it goes in the next one.

Other than that, not a lot going on here. The weather's been stormy, but at least we don't have flooding, and so far no tornadoes. My food choices have been less than stellar and I need to get back on track with that. I keep saying I'll do that, and then I get lazy and don't want to cook. That's really no excuse, I know I feel better when I eat better, it's just hard to get there when I'm this far off track.

So that's really all I have to talk about right now, I guess. I'll be back Saturday(ish), probably posting about the art journaling class I'll be taking on Saturday.

Trying to commit to blogging, again...

So, clearly I didn't manage the two posts a week I talked about in my last post. Oops. That's okay, I'll just try again.

Plan going forward:  a post on Saturday, about crafting stuff. A post on Wednesday-ish about other stuff. 

So, today is a post about crafting stuff. I've made a bunch of paper flowers out of coffee filters dyed with watered down acrylic paint, just because I felt like it, and turned some of them into this colorful garland for my fireplace (I should have spaced those middle two flowers differently):

Bright, colorful coffee filter flowers

These were really simple -- I started out cutting the edges of the coffee filters into scallops to be more petal like, but then did a bunch of them without doing that, and from a distance, it doesn't make a huge difference either way. I do wish I'd darkened the edges with paint or ink for some contrast. I just stapled probably 10 filters together, then bunched up each filter individually into the middle, and then sort of fluffed them out. The garland is made up of pairs of those glued back to back with bakers twine in the middle of them. Super easy.

I carved a new stamp:

Heart border stamp

Carving stamps is something I can do when I need to be at the computer, but am not actually captioning programs -- like in the time when I'm waiting for a show to start. It's easy to just stop when I need to start captioning, I don't feel like I'm losing my place or anything, I can just pick back up the next time I have a break.

And I've been adding things to the Zazzle store I started. Zazzle is a print on demand (POD) site -- there are quite a few out there, Society6 and Cafe Press are two others you may have heard of. I uploaded some art to Zazzle and to Society6 just to see how they work, and I've already sold some things from Zazzle. It's not going to make me rich, but if it brings in a little extra money, that would be nice. It's harder than it used to be for me to get overtime at my real job, so I'd be really happy if I can find some ways to have some extra spending money, especially if I can earn it doing things I like to do and would probably do anyway, and that's basically what this is -- the types of stuff I'm uploading is stuff I would have done anyway, now I just go a bit further with it, scanning it into the computer, cleaning it up in Photoshop some, and then uploading it to Zazzle and putting it on different products. Some of the items available are:

Wrapping paper

Pillows

Bags

And tons of others too -- some of them don't work so well with this kind of art work, but I hope to continue adding more options and more designs over time.