TUESDAY - Project Life & New Addition

This is the new addition to my office. I was shopping for a lamp for Bob's desk when I spotted this one at Walmart last week. The only blue one they had so was meant to be mine, right?

I like the larger bulb. The other lamp I had was just a small hologen that did not provide enough task lighting for the room the thing took up. The compartments for storing the 'constant use' items is nice but I particularly liked the outlet ON the base where I can plug in the heat gun or glue gun. A decent buy for a little over $12. I have a feeling when Bob sees this one, he's going after one of his own.

Okay... I puzzled over how to store the impromptu purchased Project Life items and decided the best place (and most available at the moment) was the top of the Cutting station platform. For now.

This is the top of that area where the embossing folder box is stored beneath. 

This tower of 2/ 3-drawer sterilite items have been sitting on the cutting table in the sewing room waiting for either a purpose or a pass since I purged them from the studio last fall. The bottom 3 drawers are holding the individual card packs of PL (and similar company) cards. The next 2 drawers up hold the paint chips I showed you yesterday and the top drawer contains the small image stamps purchased for the PL albums.  By the time you see this post I will have added labels to coordinate with the storage items across the room, pulling everything together.

I've finished gessoing the pages of the composition books and should have the Documented Life Planner put together for Monday's post. 

Creative Blessings!

MIXED MEDIA MONDAY - Paint Chips!

 These are the pretty Dutch Boy paint chips I unearthed last week that instantly made me think Project Life. I have no clue how long I've had them. I can tell you it's been within the last seven years.

This is the entire collection. At the time I just liked them and knew I'd use them in 'something'. So when I couldn't find anymore last week, I kept on the hunt to see what else is out there. I found these by Glidden at Walmart last week:

I apologize for the blur. Have no clue what happened. I have a stack of chips about 3" thick. I picked up 2 of each picture (because I have 2 girls albums to do) as well as 2 of each 2 coordinating colors for accents in the layout. I did not count how many different pictures I picked up . But I loved all the nature themes. Perfect for as much time as Adrian loves being outside, and has spent outside with us.

As to all the Project Life items I purchased a couple weeks ago... I found a place to put them. I'll show a pic tomorrow as well as the new addition to my desk. 

Creative Blessings!

WOYWW #253 - A Secondary Workspace

This is my work space this. If you want to see what my actual table looks like, I'm still buried under Project Life. You can see that post HERE if you missed my amazing shopping trip. I hope to have it organized this weekend.  I've been working on the dining room table for a couple of weeks. Don't really have enough room on the studio desk to spread all three of these composition books out anyway.

I have 34 pages left to gesso. Then I can FINALLY put my Documented Life Project together. I'm so excited to start working IN  the Documented Life Planner instead of pages that are here and there. I figure I'll have a month or so to determine if I want to work with this style of planner on a regular basis. If so, I can start now on gessoing next year's planner pages.

Most artists have more exciting desks than mine to look at. So head over to Julia's at StampingGround where you will find a whole list of bloggers ready to welcome you in. Julia can explain what I'm talking about. 

MIXED MEDIA MONDAY - Shopping!

Look at all my goodies! And the best part - 50% OFF!!!

This was a true find. I was not looking to pick up any Project Life items. My plan for PL was to use some of the cool freebie printables from ScrappyStickyMess and others on-line as well as designing my own. But when I rounded the isle of Hobby Lobby yesterday and saw several kits marked down by 50% I HAD to look. This is a collection between two HL stores in Springfield MO. The kits had all just been marked down that afternoon so word had not spread and I had plenty to choose from.

I bought 4 of these 40-pk bags and 4 or 5 of the smaller Memos packages. The little stamps are shrink-wrapped 2 to a package for $1 from Michaels. Perfect for Project Life

This shows more of the pads as well as a Albums kit in the background. The colors just screamed Adrian and Abby so had to grab. The hair clips are great for the PL albums or as bookmarks. They were in the $1 tower bins at Michaels.  Oh.. the frame off in the upper right corner - I got to use as a stencil - spraying through for art journals. Michaels also had DCWV Slabs for $5. I found one that fits the Victorian color-theme of my Documented Life Planner. So yeah, was a good score all the way around this weekend. Now to get it put away LOL

WOYWW #252 - Slight change from last week

Not a big change from last week. I took some time to make daily blog task bookmarks for the Documented Life Planner. The books for those are still in progress but almost done. I only have one month left to go in each of the three journals. In the mean time I'm using a spiral notebook as my daily To Do. I've traced around my kindle in the center of each page to make a smaller space that will fit the pages of the composition book. When the composition books are ready, I can collage these pages from the spiral into the appropriate dated pages.

You'll also notice a stack of 'cardstock' just above the bookmarks. Those are paint swatches. The printed stack on top are the perfect size for Project Life cards! And with beautiful backgrounds. Dutch Boy, I believe. The cards below are nice solid colors also perfect to use as base cards in the PL albums.  I didn't not pick these up for this purpose. But in searching through my Altered scraps drawer for items to send to a artist/ writer buddy in ME I found the paint chips I forgot I had. They are now all put away.

Okay, so why am I telling you this? This is the day of the week when we peek into other artist's spaces. Go to Julia Dunnit's blog first for all the details and links to other fun places to visit.

One more thing. Some of you had asked about the box I'm storing my embossing folders in. This is it. $20 at the craft store but only $5 at Dollar General! All of my embossing folders are in here and slides under the shelf there. Then my extra manilla folders and the platform for the Vagabond sit on top of the box. I'm keeping the old platform sizzix in case I want to play when there's a power outage. I'm not keeping it there, just haven't figured out the best place to store it for now. 

Creative Blessings!

WOYWW #251

We have a blast on WOYWW. Don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about? Stop in at Julia Dunnit’s blog for all the DETAILS. In a nutshell, this gives us an open invitation every Wednesday to showcase what we’re working on and to peek in on work spaces all over the world. We would love to have you join us!

So here’s my desk for this week:

I did not get the travel journal finished to take with me. The chipboard pages are covered and the binding edges all trimmed in washi tape. You can see the page templates made from file folders. I got the designs from a Heidi Swapp journal. There was a great variety to use as a jumping off point for designing my own for future albums. The stamps with letters/ numbers are visible to the right and my paper selection on the left.

The drive down was a nightmare. I chose to try the interstate (which I hate to use) because I thought it would be faster. Such a bad decision. The northeast corner of Arkansas enroute to the interstate was not a pleasant drive for a variety of reasons. Add construction on the interstate from Conway to Texarkana and I was so mentally exhausted at the end of the drive. At one point I only went 4 miles in 45 min!

The Texas Music Awards was a great experience. I made some good business contacts. Was nice to meet artists face to face I've only been networking with and promoting on-line the past three years.

The drive home using only a state highway taking me through the Boston Mountains was much more pleasant. I stopped in Eureka Springs Arkansas for lunch and would like to have stayed the night just because I LOVE that town. I swear Eureka Springs is like the town of Eureka in the movie channel. Just a a different air to breathe - and so relaxing. Maybe it's just me but when I cross the city limit line I feel as if I've come home. If you ever want a truly relaxing vacation I recommend Eureka Springs Arkansas. The Crescent Hotel is the place to stay if you want ghostly experiences. Otherwise, the only place I stay when I'm in town is the Best Western Inn of the Ozarks. There are two Best Western's in ES so make sure you look for Inn of the Ozarks.

For now, I invite you to travel around our community and see what my WOYWW friends are up to.

MIXED MEDIA MONDAY - Documented Life Project Progress

Happy Monday, everyone!
When this post greets you I will have just returned home from my first trip to Texas. So I'm scheduling this. If I can add a couple more pics between then and now I will. For now, not really exciting.

Really exciting pic, eh?

You are looking at one of the three composition books upside down. This is so I can get a better stroke with the brush. You can just see the other 2 in the background.

Okay - 3 Composition books = 1 per each quarter of the year. I've already been using one for the first quarter and nearly finished as a plain 'Daily To Do' journal process. I'll go back and make it blend with the other three quarters over the year - maybe. But I wanted to get these other journals prepped for the remainder of 2014.

In the first quarter journal I've written my 'daily tasks' on the right hand side of the page, then when I turned the page, anything extra like tracking numbers for packages, addresses of people I've mailed stuff to, etc were written on the back of that dated page. 1 piece of paper, 1 date, lots of activities.

In the remaining three quarters I needed to move things a bit to accommodate our weekly artistic challenge at The Documented Life. So I decided to set the pages up like a typical dayplanner 2-pg spread. My Daily Tasks will be on the left hand page and other items, as well as doodling will be on the facing page... incorporating the other items into the 'art work'. But I did not want to be limited to just ink/ gel pens for my doodling. What if I want to add bold color with a marker or some water color? Typical notebook paper pages would never hold up to that type of playing.

At first I had planned to cover that page with a sheet of watercolor paper. But then I realized doing that on every page would add MORE bulk than I'm already going to have with the tip-outs and art challenge pages. So I opted to put a coat of gesso on every right-hand page. I'm working all three journals at once for this process and it goes rather quickly. A coat of gesso only takes a couple hours to dry enough that I can slide a piece of waxtex between the pages and start the next one.

This process is still going to take a few days to complete all 3 journals - and I'm going to lose some prep time over the weekend while I'm on my trip. My plan is to just work through them as quick as I can so that I'll be able to start using the Documented Life Project planner with the beginning of April.

This morning, I got all of the calendar pages trimmed to fit inside the journal and washi-taped the seams. They are all ready to add into the journals. Next week I'll show you more progress and some added items I picked up at Office Depot.

Creative Blessings!