The Trees Keep Reappearing

Can you tell I live in the North American west coast rain forest?  No matter the color scheme, the coniferous trees are a constant source of inspiration.

Making "Guy Cards"

Making cards for the men in my life is always a challenge.  

Hand painted paper

Gelli Print

Stamp by Tim Holtz

A Burst of Card Making

And using up some papers from my stash - always a good thing.

Bird Stamp by Inkadinkado

It Only Takes One or Two...

It only takes one or two successful prints to make me happy.  

And I usually only get one or two. LOL

Thoughts on Unfinished Journals: You Don't Have to Finish the Way You Started

Gelli Print

The second journal I'm working on finishing began its life as a sketchbook.  Most of the pages are kraft, and a few are cream.  I stumbled upon a You Tube video by Robyn McClendon in which she prints in a kraft journal and a light bulb lit up in my head.  I may change my mind again, but so far, I'm having lots of fun!

Each day I work with a different color palette.

A few trees are making an appearance.

Magenta Stamps

Here are a few more ATC's that I made recently and forgot to post.  The stamps are by Magenta, colored with Prismacolor pencil crayons.

Thoughts on Unfinished Journals: Why My Brain is Tired

Zeigarnik

Sprayed Ink Accordian Journal

Zeigarnik is the psychological fixation on unfinished tasks.  Zeigarnik explains why I spend so much time thinking about my unfinished journals.  You can read more about it and see some beautiful sketchbook pages here, on Laurie Doctor's blog.  She talks about how this is linked to procrastination, productivity, and multi-tasking.

Although I feel better knowing why I think about it and how to solve it, getting at the solution is harder than it looks.  (I already knew what the solution is - just finish them!)  Even before I read Laurie's article, I began to take the unfinished journals off my shelf and work on finishing them.

I'm trying to do them in the order in which they were started.  This is the first, an accordian journal just waiting for a few small entries to complete it.  

Now it is done:

And on the reverse:

Here's a close-up of a few of my favorite pages:

Snow Day

Monoprinting is a perfect way to spend a snowy day.  You can see how it influenced my prints too.

Christmas Already?

Pencil Crayon

Stamps by Magenta

When you're a card maker, you start thinking about Christmas quite early.  I've seen a few Christmas cards and tags around my blog hopping, and they inspired these.

Pencil Crayon

Stamps by Clearly Wordsworth

Although they are Artist Trading Cards, they can be made into a card quite easily.

Oh, Canada!

ATC

Pencil Crayon

Original Photo at Paint My Photo

I guess there was one more bird in me!

I'm thinking about drawing faces again.