Art Journaling in Perspective

In the midst of the more "practical" preparations for my craft show on Friday evening, my art journal has been a daily creative constant.

Right now my attention has been on creating inventory lists, tying business cards to shopping bag handles, and fashioning a Studio 791 sign for the front of my table.

There is a certain amount of creativity involved in this work, but a lot of it is more practical or repetitive in nature.

On top of this work, there have been family responsibilties, and, more recently, terrible flu symptoms.

Sometimes I only manage a few minutes at my work table--I put down a few lengths of paper tape, stamp out a phrase, or create a quick Zentangle design.

I definitely like it best when I can sit down for 20 minutes to an hour and make a full page or spread.  But even these stolen daily moments give me a feeling of satisfaction to take to sleep with me.

For awhile, I felt like working in my art journal was my only creative endeavor, and I felt like I was limiting myself.  But I didn't have time for much more.

Now I feel that art journaling is in its proper place--for me, that is.  It's not the only creative work I am doing.  But it's a daily discipline, a daily playtime, a daily satisfaction.

Studio 791 Tour

Studio 791 has found a home!

When my younger daughter was born in early 2009, I gave over my dedicated art-making space to be a nursery.  My work table, books, notebooks, boxes, papers, files, pens, paints, totes, brushes, ribbons, buttons, glues, stamps, punches, ink pads, scissors, and all the rest found an uneasy home in the playroom/living room downstairs. 

With the addition of a sewing machine, my workspace expanded into the dining room.

As itinerant as it made me feel, the one truly driven nuts by the crafting overflow situation was my husband!

When our girls decided they wanted to share a room, we jumped at the chance.  It was a win/win/win--they got to share a room (and act like banshees every night at bedtime), I got my craft room back, and my husband got my crafts out of his constant line of sight!

It was so "meant to be" that it only took a few hours to get everything back upstairs and into place two Saturdays ago. 

For me, it is a creative haven of art-making bliss!

The two little urchins are never far away!

The opposite corner of the room has the closet (doors removed), which gives me most of my storage space, and my computer cart-turned-sewing table.  You can see my tote bag at the ready by the door, containing basic supplies (mostly for art journaling) to carry between the upstairs and downstairs.

In the back corner of the closet, I tucked a two-shelf bookcase on wheels to hold all of the books I use for collage and art journaling elements--nursery rhyme books, foreign language texts, art books, dictionaries, that sort of thing.  The two storage cubes also have all sorts of ephemera--papers, filed magazine images, stamps, tickets and postcards, etc.

The top shelf of the closet holds labeled shoe boxes of embossing materials, punches, tags, adhesives, stencils, and Scrabble tiles.  The next shelf down holds my rubber stamp collection, organized into labeled acrylic photo frames:

The shelf under that has ink pads and seriously small bits and pieces (beads, game pieces, etc.).  And the shelf under that has my painting supplies.  On the floor I have a crate, filled with jumbo Ziploc bags holding all my paper scraps in rough color groupings (blue and purple; orange and red; yellow; green; white and cream; brown, black and vintage):

A tower of drawers holds my scrapbooking papers, used for all kinds of projects, along with drawers for cards, scissors, pens, and "miscellaneous".  (You can categorize all year, and I swear you'll always end up with a "miscellaneous" drawer or two!)

There is an enormous armoire tucked in a back alcove corner of the room, and it provides me another great source of storage, with doors that can shut away the inside from view.  Right now it holds mainly sewing supplies and magazine archives.

I let my four-year-old take a picture of me in my new digs.  By the look of the outfit I have on, it's a good thing it's blurry!  But I think you can still see how gloriously relaxed I look to sit back in my own personal art space.

I leave you with a couple cute pics of my "studio mascots":

Bayla, age 2-1/2

Katy, turning 4 next week

Enjoy a happy, healthy, creative weekend!

It's Official!

It feels official, anyway!

I made my first batch of official business cards this weekend, and shared them with friends at my monthly MOPS meeting this morning.

Originally, I was planning on some fancy graphic, or maybe some hand-stamping on each of the cards to give it an "artsy" touch.

Instead, I opted for a straight-forward, "just-the-facts" approach to make it simple and easy to read.

What do you think?

I know that the style of the cards will evolve, and I may investigate Moo cards, which would allow me to include examples of my work.  (Cool!)  But for now, I will use these cards to represent myself at my first Holiday Bazaar next week. 

(I hope it's well-attended, because I got carried away and ran a zillion more cards than strictly necessary!)

I spent some time yesterday in my dining room, planning the "staging" of my table for the bazaar.  I will give you a sneak peek at the rough-draft version, but you'll have to come back next weekend to see the real deal!

Happy Thursday!