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.