Scribbles & Bits

Sometimes I Blog....

I've had great plans to blog about all the things I've been working on, but with the run of Wicked for 4 weeks, it's not an easy possibility.

It's a shame, because I think this card deserves some face time.  A tracing of a french curve and a lot of free time with hole punches turned this out.  I made my usual 7 again (2 for me, 2 for my Grandfather, 2 for my Aunt, and 1 for the card box at work).

I thought this one came out pretty great, too.  A Father's Day card for my grandfather.  It's was my first time to work with ribbon on a card.  I thought it looked pretty great in the vellum envelope.  I included it with some homemade gingersnap cookies and the latest Evanovich book.

But this sock has been my knitting obsession.  I have posted a lot about knitting lately because I've been working on a piece I'd like to submit to Knitty, but I've kind of gotten tired of it for now.  I've been ready to work with someone else's pattern and this one from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch seemed like the perfect one. I tired it once before but for some reason wasn't haviong a lot of luck.  Luck is on my side now, though!  The pattern recommends a self-striping yarn, but this one from Yarn Pirate (earth and ocean) basically only has two colors so it works brilliantly for that! 

And, a little by-the-by: Wicked seems to be a wonderful show (the little bit I've ever seen of it), but working it has made it live up to its name....  Can't wait till I can pull my head from the sand!

A Little More

I'll hop a plane tomorrow to go see family for a few days.  Yay for graduations! I'll be away from the internet so I figured I'd post a few more pictures to continue this project.

A Hobby I Haven't Mentioned

That title probably sounds a lot more nefarious than it should.  Is now the time I admit to devient behavior?  Nah, not this time.  This is the time I admit that I have a paper journal that I keep (with not a lot of regularity either.  See?  It doesn't just apply to the digital format!).  I've read a lot about visual journals and the tips and talents out there are staggering.  Looking around, I started to feel that mine paled in comparison.  Now I acknowledge it for what it is: a learning experience in progress.  So I've decided to excerpt some of my favorite pages (w/ all the truly personal whining blocked out) and mention some of the techniques I use (just in case there's something helpful here)!  The first two excerpts just show use of colored clip art.  I know my drawing skills can be lacking sometimes and really, it's pretty satisfying to photocopy some clip art and just sit down and color!  The second excerpt shows the direction I thought I would head: entire pages devoted to favorite quotes.  For some reason I got out of that mode and now just write them on pages (usually interlaced w/ other things) in a different color so I can pick them out easily.

A lot of the pages are just pictures of things I like w/ some form of decoration around them.  The thing I really had to get over was not always being able to think of something decorative right then.  There are several pages even now that have a picture or two glued to them and are blank all around, just waiting for some pretty filler. 

In some cases, I've pre-painted the pages just because, but I tend to veer away from that b/c who wants to be writing about something sad on a bright yellow background?  I'm just odd about stuff like that, I guess.  I also used to veer away from putting jokes and stuff like that in my journals, but thenI read that da Vinci did that, so now I'm over that.

I've found it's a good place to experiment w/ new rubber stamps, too.  So random doodles, random things I like out of magazines (like the lady in the astronaut helemt from an AARP mag), random rubber stamps, and random doodlings.  Fits me, right?

Of course I do actually keep track of my personal ideas here, too.

This is a pretty picture-heavy post, so I'm going to just stop for now, but I'll probably post some more pages in a few days just for fun.