Good Morning Lilac--Remember Your Sleep

Here's a page that I did a while back in my "good morning lilac" journal to remind me of how important it is to my mental health and happiness to get plenty of sleep.

Remains of the Day

So I finally got around to working on the online class "Remains of the Day" with Mary Ann Moss last month.  I made a most fabulous journal that I am only now just starting to fill up.  It's very different from most of the art-journaling that I do in that this one already has decorated background pages and so requires no painting.  I loved finding a good use for all of the cute scrapbook paper and other scrap-booking supplies that I've held onto for a while.

Prayer Book

The main art journal I've been working in lately is the Scandinavian Cookbook that I altered into a "Prayer Book."  I haven't shared all of the pages that I've worked in because some of them feel too personal to share online, but here are a few glimpses....

Monday Prayer Book

The past week I haven't felt all that inspired to work in my art journals...but today I decided to start by writing about that and just go from there....and I ended up creating a whole new spread within about an hour!

Journalfest--Day 3

On the last day of Journalfest, I took a class with Lisa Cheney-Jorgenson called "Learning to See."  She taught us how to do contour drawings, shade with cross hatching, mix and paint with watercolors and touch it up with color pencils.  Here's one of the drawings that I worked on:
( I can't figure out how to make it right side up!)

Journalfest -- Day 2

On the 2nd day of Journalfest, I took Joyful Altered Books with Liesel Lund.  I love her colorful, happy style.  We spent the morning preparing old hardcover books by ripping out extra pages, gluing some pages together for durability, and taping/gluing in flaps and envelopes.   I ended up finishing up the cover after I got home (and decided to make it a prayer book).  I started working on the inside but only have a few unfinished pages so far....

Journalfest -- Day 1

I am back from Journalfest and loving all the projects and inspiration that I came home with.  On the first day, I took a class with Traci Bunkers where we made a journal with the cover of an old hard back book, filled with a mixture of papers.

I liked learning a new type of stitch and love the fact that all the materials are repurposed.  It was actually really nice to be able to clean out my collection of paper!  I'm planning on adding beads and charms to the strings and am excited about filling it up!

Getting Ready for Journalfest!

Tomorrow I am leaving for Journalfest!  I've been getting everything ready....

My trades are 4x5 photographs of flowers and journal pages....I tried to think of something that I would love to get....I love using flower photos in my journals and I love getting sneak peaks of other people's journal work....

I've also been loving putting together all of my beloved art supplies and packing up in the new suitcase that I got for my birthday, one that is finally big enough for the purposes of art retreats!  And cute!

I think that I'm all ready, but am feeling a bit anxious about what I might have forgotten!  

Other than that, I can't wait!  

Drug store inspiration

Inspiration can be found anywhere, even in the drug store.  I was stuck in Rite Aid for over an hour, calling and waiting, picking up a prescription.....but there's lots to look at while you're waiting.

Precious

Isn't he precious?

Good Morning Lilac Journal

I love the movie "50 First Dates." In the movie, Lucy has memory loss that prevents her from gaining any new memories that last longer than a day.  So her love puts together a movie for her that says something along the lines of Good Morning Lucy and it's for her to watch every morning so that she can remember where she is in her life.  I sometimes feel like I have short-term memory loss when it comes to remembering important insights that I have figured out and I like the idea of having a journal that I look through every morning to remind me of what I've learned and what I'm working on in my life.  So I decided to start a journal for this purpose and I will continue to add to it....

Liberty Local Indie Craft Fair

Last Sunday, I went to Ann Arbor Art Center's Liberty Local Indie Craft Fair.  It was one of the better craft fairs that I've been too.  Here are the treasures that I found: a patchwork checkbook cover with snails (my favorite animal!), a needle-felted pear wallet in fun colors, tangerine and blackberry soap, and a new necklace.

You are perfect as you are

Here are my most recent art journal pages.  I took a photo of the pages when they were about half-way done to show the progression.  It might be fun to take more photos along the way next time!

Katherine's Altered Book

 We swapped altered books on Sunday and so this month I get to work in Katherine's book.  Her book is a technique book, where she already did a bunch of alterations and people get to add on to them.  I chose some pages where she had glued in extra fold out pages...giving me even more paper space to decorate and color!

Farmer's Market Flowers

Last photo for the day is of the gorgeous flowers that I picked up at the Farmer's Market today.  I also picked up some tasty raspberry-cream cheese strudel from Zingerman's, but can't photograph that because I already ate it! Yum!

More art journaling

Here are some art journal pages that I never shared.  These pages were all about me just playing around and exploring with some new techniques.

Tiny Accordian Art Journal

I feel like I'm returning to my blog with a vengeance after having missing it for about a month!  To catch up....here are some photos of the teeny-tiny accordian journal that I was working in.  Some pages I like more or less than others, but what I really like is the idea of daily practice (even though it's been many days since I've worked on it....)

Aging with Attitude--Altered Book

Tomorrow our Altered Book Round Robin is meeting to trade books.  This month I worked on Merrill's "Aging with Attitude" book!  I was so excited about the theme but waited until the very last day (today) to actually work in it.  It's just been a busy month for teachers.  I'm glad that I have this monthly motivation to get me creating.  I think the pages look somewhat better in real life, but here's the photo anyways.

Classroom Blog

I've changed my mind about my classroom blog again.  Rather than starting a brand new one, I decided to add the teacher blog to my current classroom website and here it is:
http://thurston2.aaps.k12.mi.us/moonh/Kindergarten_Website/Teachers/Teachers.html
There's not much on it yet, but I'm hoping to add more creative classroom ideas to it soon!

Random photo snapshot

I was lounging on the couch and playing with my iphone (probably checking newsy and the weather) when I thought that this little glimpse of my life would make a good photo.  It's like journaling about the ordinary things that you'd normally overlook, but that maybe years from now you'll look back on and think--wow that's what a normal day used to look like!

Creative School Projects

So even though I haven't posted on my blog for a while, I have been staying creatively busy.  I've started thinking about school already and spent some time organizing my classroom and getting things prepared.  For a bit, it sounded like I might be going full-time and to mentally prepare myself for that change I created a little scrapbook-style schedule to help my stay balanced.  Here it is, hanging over my alter that I decided to set up again once I realized how much I was missing having one....

...so I found out after that I'll probably stay part-time, but I still have this for when things change.  Other creative school projects that I've been busy with include:  sewing curtains (with the cutest ever fabric) for an area of my classroom, decorating binders that I'll use to organize student assessment paperwork, cutting out squares (from leftover scrapbook paper) and adding numbers for our calendar routine school day count, decorating my lesson plan book (see photo below) and much more....

I have also discovered a whole fabulous world of Kindergarten (and 1s/2nd grade) teacher idea blogs while spending too much time on Pinterest.  I've decided to once again start a teacher blog of my own: http://msmoonskindergarten.blogspot.com/  so that I have a designated space for sharing/seeking ideas and inspiration for the classroom.  It's not much yet because, quite frankly, I needed to boot myself off of the internet (currently have a 1 hour time limit that I set up for myself on my laptop so that I don't overdo it!).  And a link to my Pinterest account...I'm still trying to decide if I should keep separate accounts for work vs. creative life...but we'll see.  

Mixed Media Paper Arts Class

Another thing that I've been busy with this summer is my Mixed Media Paper Arts class taught by Katherine Willson.  One thing that I really like about the class is that we come home every week with at least one finished project.  One of my favorite projects involves an ink-decorated altoid tin that houses a tiny accordion journal.  I thought it would be fun to do a tiny page every day until it's filled up.  Here's a photo of the first two pages I started working on.

Altered Book Round Robin

Yesterday I had some fabulous artists over for our Altered Book Round Robin get together.  Here are some photos of the cover and sign in page of my altered book (all about birds), but I totally forgot to snap a picture of my first page that I did.....so I'll have to share that later.  The cover is collaged with images and artwork from other artists that I've sort of been collecting....including business cards and trades from Artfest.  Apparently I'm not the only one drawn to bird imagery in artwork.   The next book that I get to work in is called "Aging with Attitude"--sounds very fun!

Today is a lovely day....

Today it is a beautiful and quiet Monday (summer) morning and I was thinking about how much I love my bright and colorful living room, with the sunlight lighting up different patches, and feeling so blessed that I have a little creativity corner.  The picture is not quite the same as real life.

Today's creative project and crazy colors

Today I worked on painting this dresser/desk piece of furniture that I had salvaged from the dumpster.  Although I originally planned on painting it white, after going through all the trouble to sand and prime it, it felt like a shame to paint it such a boring color.  So instead, I used paint on hand and made it apricot and hot pink.  I'm thinking of painting the sides and top of it "leopard print" if I can figure out how...to look somewhat like photo on the right.  Wouldn't that be fabulous?