Christmas traditions

As a grandmother, there is one thing I'm excited about this Christmas. In five days, I'm going to meet my grandson, James for the first time. He will be three months old on Monday. I also will be seeing Abigail for the third time. Ironically, Don's first wife, Lynn, is also seeing one of her grandchildren (the same two kids) for the third time, as we will be in Colorado together. In her case, however, that would be James. She was there when James was born and the family visited her for Thanksgiving.

That being said, I am not totally into the Christmas spirit yet. For a number of reasons. However, I am keeping focused on Jesus, the real reason for the season. And I'm enjoying two of our Christmas traditions, which are listening to carols on the stereo and making Christmas cards. Music is Don's passion year round, paper crafts of many kinds are mine. We enjoy incorporating these passions into one of the most important holidays of the year. 

My Christmas cards, posted second, all look pretty much like the second of the two images I'm sharing today. It's so subtle I don't even know if Don is noticing it as he signs the cards, but the cards do reflect our love of music, as the fronts are embossed with music notes and clefts. (Thanks to a Christmas gift a few years ago from Holly, a very sweet stepdaughter.)  If I didn't snail mail you one of these cards, consider this online version my wish for you. 

And if you are one of the people viewing this blog because you're interested in my art journal pages, I hope you enjoy how my Christmas card inspired an art journal page, the top image. The journaling mentions our two favorite traditions, but also scratches the surface of why I'm not feeling highly Christmas spirited this year. You can't read it, because the photo cut too much off for it to make sense. 

But in both this entry, and this one, you can see how I incorporate journaling into "art." Since journaling has always kind of been my "signature" on scrapbook pages, I can see pages like these being my style in art journaling too. Not my signature, because most of my art journal pages don't have this much. But I am very happy with the ones that do.

I like giveaways

I haven't used chipboard in awhile on my scrapbook pages, and I don't think I ever have in my art journal. But this stuff is pretty. So if you're a paper artist, check out this blog's giveaway drawing!

http://bluefernstudios.blogspot.com/2012/12/our-first-giveaway.html

Circles of art and more circles of art

Sometimes you just have to make art for art's sake. And sometimes, even that isn't going to last long. When I posted my background of doodled circles last time I wrote on this blog, I knew I wasn't happy with the finished product. And so, it has been revised. It used to say "I will run." I am still running, in fact have been in a new 5K race since then, ran Nov. 11 in 42:33. 

Now it says "I will believe." The theme of the whole book is "I will believe." I mean, that's what this book is telling me. Believe me, art journals speak to their creators. Or maybe it's God speaking to us through our own artwork. I titled "this book "Dream" and yet more than once, when creating the "journaling" aspect of the pages, I've heard a still small voice tell me "just believe." There's even a page from awhile back that addresses that this book should have been titled "Believe," not dream.

Except that for three weeks, a Pea at Two Peas in A Bucket was posting art journal challenges there, I have to give Tammy Garcia, a serious art journalist who publishes the blog Daisy Yellow, credit for almost all of my art journal ideas. (She also had a challenge one time to read crafty books, so I will say that when participating in that challenge, the book rather than Daisy Yellow inspired about 10 new things on my art journal pages. But for the most part, three sections of the Daisy Yellow blog have inspired my work. The first was "Jump Start Your Art Journal" which was a series of prompts I used for the first three or four months I was working on this art journal to jump into this concept. 

The second series of prompts I have been using were called "Daily Paper Prompts." Tammy posted these back in August and September, but since I was working on the "Jump Start" prompts then, I didn't get started on them until late September, and I am only now nearly caught up. It helps that my lovely chains of circles were inspired by several of the Daily Paper Prompts, and also one of Tammy's blog posts that don't fit into any of her inspiration series.  If you are a follower of Tammy's, and are familiar with the Daily Paper Prompts, note that the page in question (the one on the bottom of the above photo) is inspired by DPP 16 (Pattern), DPP 43 (Circles), DPP 47 (Stamping Circles) and DPP 57 (One Word). It was also inspired by one of the three Two Peas challenges, at least in its original form, and by Tammy's Nov. 14 post "Just A Little Black Paint."

I am doing all of my pages as single-page illustrations, but in a bound sketching book from the Jurupa Valley Michael's. Sometimes, the facing pages make an impact. In the case of the page facing my "Believe" page, in real life, that page has made more of an impact on the facing page than the other way around. The blue paint I used to stamp circles with bled quite a bit over to the other page, so they share that blue paint now.

But since the book will not lay flat, in every picture I took of my "Believe" page, it is overshadowed by the page with a door. That page also is inspired by several of Tammy's blog posts, but right now I can't figure out which ones.

An ongoing series of inspirations that Tammy posts every Friday are her No-Frills Prompts. These prompts begin with a photo that illustrates some design concept. For me, the photos and prompts usually inspire some simple art journal creation, like a drawing. She had put these on hiatus earlier this fall, but resumed them two Fridays ago. I joined in on the fun then. 

Last week, the photo was of bottles of Coke, and the emphasis was "repetition." I drew several versions of a new part of Diet Coke's logos, which is a red square with a polar bear in it. I am not real eager to share my attempt at drawing polar bears, so that project will likely become the background for something else soon, and once it looks better, might be shared here. 

I was happier with my results of this week's prompts, which was of gelato ice cream and calls "flavor" a design concept. One way Tammy suggested we illustrate "flavor" is to use circles to contain different colors. She also suggested diagramming the perfect ice cream sundae.

OK, the perfect ice cream sundae is any ice cream sundae I can create with one of my favorite rubber stamps. It's from a set of stamps I picked up in the dollar section of the Target on Tyler in 2005, right after I had moved to Riverside. While the balloon and cupcake stamps I picked up at the same time as this one probably get more use, I do also like this one. And it made the perfect sundaes for this exercise, along with markers to create and color the circles and color the "glass" cups these sundaes sit in, a fancy lead pencil for coloring in the spoons (the pencil is also one of my favorite drawing tools), and Stickles for coloring the ice cream. This one may stay just the way it is, but in this journal, any page could change at any given time. Believe me.

Thankful for a few things

Some of my friends did projects in November, not necessarily on paper, listing 30 things they were thankful for. I did not. I must confess, it's hard for me to have an attitude of gratitude these days. Yet I recently came across a new-to-me art journal blog, A Year In the Life of An Art Journal  It lists 26 very detailed prompts each year and invites readers to use these to create their own art journal pages. And on Nov. 30 (seen by me yesterday) it suggested that anyone who did not do the "30 Days of Gratitude" project list at least one thing for which they were thankful. Both the host of this blog and one of her designers did that, then wrote some variation of the word "thankful" across their journaling, but in their case, white pages, black journaling and their variations of  "thankful" painted in blue.

The first blank page in my book was the one to the left of the tree, also shown here. When I came across this blog last week, I started with the prompt posted Nov. 15 and started working my way back. One of the October prompts was to "use leaves" and write about how you know it's really fall. This actually isn't all that easy to tell in southern California. But after finishing this page, it turns out I actually had done similar journaling a month ago, when I was sitting in Starbucks drinking the first hot drink of the season. (It is strictly iced in summer here!) I'll show you that one, but first let me tell you the five things I ended up being thankful for yesterday, and also a little bit about how I made both of these pages for those interested.

My five things:
1. On Nov. 30, I went on a job interview that looks promising.
2. On Thanksgiving Day, and the day after, we spent time with Don's family.
3. On the day after Thanksgiving, we also got to visit Newport Beach where my cousin was staying with her husband's family. We celebrated her older son's third birthday, and were the only representatives of her family there, because the boy gets to have another party later up north with my aunt, uncle and other 2 cousins.
4. Colder weather is here.
5. On Nov. 11, I ran the Mission Inn 5K and shaved more than 20 seconds from my previous 5K time.

On the "fall is here" page, I started by using my brown mist, and one of the tree masks I bought with the first bottle of this mist I had. I then journaled about the difficulty of knowing when it's fall here. I guess you can, at first, say it's fall when it drops below 90 degrees most days and you are drinking iced pumpkin spice lattes because even though it's October it's still too warm for the hot drinks. Football season has arrived, and baseball season is wrapping up. A few trees change the color of leaves that eventually then drop, although most here just stay green. After journaling, I inked the page with two colors of ink, Adirondack Brown and Tim Holtz Distress Ink Walnut Stain.

Some of that brown ink made its way over to the left side of the book, so if I wanted to use that page, it had to incorporate brown as well. The journaling prompt immediately prior to the "fall" page also was a monochromatic brown page, so I decided to fit one more all-brown page in between. I journaled the five things I'm thankful for, then misted over that, and added more ink.

But in between these two pages, I looked back in my book and came across these I had done near the end of October. I had written, at the top of the page on the left "In October, you wake up one day and it's cloudy or even misting. It's not going to get hot today!! You can wear pants, or maybe even long sleeves.  It won't get cold here, but summer is finally over!" Oh, that was perfect journaling for the prompt that hadn't even been posted then! Especially since I was following prompts on Daisy Yellow to journal while drinking coffee (my first hot Starbucks of the season), and create a page in shades of tan, brown and copper. (I also was exploring drawing mandalas at that time, but I'm not sure I like those.)

I decided I needed to use the part of the Year in the Life of An Art Journal prompt to use leaves. So I did kind of the opposite of what I do with my masks. I had the reverse image of a leaf die cut, so I positioned it on the page three times and sprayed it with mist. I imagine I will just keep the reverse image in a stash so I can color more leaves in this way in the future. But I really liked the effect on the color of the formerly purple reverse image. I remembered I had bought this brown mist for, and also first used the red mist on, a layout about  our wine-drinking experience at the 2012 Los Angeles County Fair. Since that's the end of September, and "fall" had not really arrived in southern California, I was wearing my lavender shorts outfit that day, but had used the "fallish" wine-themed embellishments that were in my stash.  See?  (Scroll down to the bottom two pages of the "Keeping Busy" entry.) The leaf, both its positive and reverse images, had been in my stash forever. But the positive image, now sprayed with both brown and red mist, has now found a home on the wine page. I love that my art journaling has helped improve a scrapbook page, but that wasn't the first time that happened.

Doodling and drawing

Since taking up art journaling as a new hobby, I have  become bolder about one thing, and that is simple drawings. I have drawn very crude drawings of a favorite childhood doll, the Chicago skyline, a country road (well probably a Jurupa Valley road that was a country road when I first saw it), a more urban street that is definitely in Jurupa Valley, some abstract thing that was like art on the cover of one of Don's record albums, a bird, my shoe, flowers and trees, these artsty things called mandalas that I had never heard of before taking up art journaling, and my kitchen. As well as countless pages where I drew "doodles." These were popular in scrapbooking a few years ago, so I tried my hand at simple doodles on my layouts then, and not long after invested in some acrylic stamps that looked like what I could doodle then. Now, along with drawing, I am branching out a bit more in my doodling attempts. This one is an example. Where as I might have just drawn a loopy line in the past, today I drew seven lines of interconnected circles. I was inspired after looking at a chain the 13-year-old daughter of one of my favorite Art Journal masters, Tammy Garcia of Daisy Yellow, had drawn. My chains aren't quite as good as Tammy's daughter's, but I bet she's had more practice than me.

I chose green because there's a new art journal challenge and it's on my favorite scrapbooking website, Two Peas in A Bucket. The challenge there gives four prompts each week. This one was "use green, use paint, use the words "I am grateful" and use "some doodling." (I think I used more than some.

Art journals is usually about layers, and while not all of mine have multiple layers, to get the "I am grateful" part of this onto the page, this one needed a simple top layer. This is one of the many pages in my journal that I am not sure are finished.  But, I will be moving on until another week's challenge or one of Daisy Yellow's prompts inspire me to add more.

Keeping busy

Last weekend, Don and I visited the  Los Angeles County Fair. We used go every year, but for a number of reasons, this was our first visit in three years. We picked a good weekend, as both this weekend and all earlier weekends in September were quite a bit warmer than last weekend. But, as always, we only saw about one-fourth of the fair, including the pirates and parrots show illustrated here. Before this show we also checked out the wine and the "natural resources" area behind the garden/wine building. This year, the area included displays of birds and reptiles from around the world, and information on the history of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, and what these federal government agencies do today. This included a replica of a Forest Service lookout, a small nature trail, an opportunity (which we declined) to saw logs like a lumberjack and more. We finished the day by checking out some of the art, and by eating at the sit-down restaurant at the fair, which is something different every year, this year Italian food. I may have said on my other blog that I was going to enter nut breads in this year's fair, but I procrastinated too long, and did not mail the entry in. Maybe next year. I just have a hard time cooking nut breads in August though, when it's usually hot enough without firing up the oven for an hour or more.

These are two of the three two-page scrapbook layouts I've made about the fair.The background paper for both are from a really old stack of paper I bought in Target in 2005.The layout I have not photographed used paper almost that old that I bought at Michael's about the same time, one of those many times I've bought far more sheets for a specific project than I would use on that one project. Some scrapbookers will throw away papers they have had even for as little as a year, but not me. I love being able to mix old and brand new things for a scrapbook page that is all mine.

The page with the parrots I made with help from CSI Color Stories Inspiration, which provides free printables every week, including the wood-grain paper, the journaling card and the bird, which I enlarged 200 percent before printing. All of their printables match a specific color/embellishment/journaling scrapbook challenge offered each week. Although I have done a page for the challenge, CSIs is one of the trickiest scrapbook challenges out there, and this particular scrapbook page did not meet all of the challenge requirements. So I made another page, not about the fair, that did, but I'm still glad when the CSI weekly printables work on my "real life" pages as well.

This Saturday, Don and I were again busy, as we were interested in two events in Jurupa Valley. One of the two turned out to be a big disappointment, but I will soon scrapbook 15 photos or more from the other event, the Flabob Flying Circus.

Meet James

It just dawned on me today that I have not updated this blog to tell everyone that I am now a grandmother of TWO! My grandson, James Cronin, was born on Monday Here he is getting a hug from his big sister Abigail.  Aren't they both adorable? I am sure I will have plenty more to say about both of them - soon!

Yes, I am getting organized. Week 2 of the Organize Your Stuff Challenge

This corner of this room is the center of my scrapbooking (and art journaling) creativity. Except for one black filing box full of tags and a few other things I don't use all the time, this photo contains everything I use to create my pages. And this stuff is pretty well organized - for me at least. Obviously, there is a great deal of room for improvement. But look how far I have come already!

I took these two photos when trying to do Week 2 of an earlier round of the Organize Your Stuff Challenge. I think this photo was taken during Round 2, it actually would have to have been because I took that photo of the tractor in early 2010. I forgot I still had that godforsaken guest bed then! Perhaps you can see why I gave up. But I didn't completely give up. For four years then I had persistently been nagging my husband about my dislike of having that bed in there. Sometime later in 2010, persistence paid off. A couple we are friends with needed an extra bed, and my husband gave this one to him. That freed up room for the bookcase, which I purchased sometime in 2011.

At the time I took these earlier pictures, I drew in one of my little altered notebooks a sketch of what I dreamed the scraproom would look like. I don't know where that notebook is now, but an image in my mind of that sketch governed how I reorganized the scraproom after getting the bookcase.

I cannot remember if my sketch addressed what I knew was a growing trend among owners of the condominiums where I live, which is to convert the room that is next to the kitchen to either an extended kitchen, or to a den. The room in question in my condo is the scraproom. If the floor plan has not been altered, as is the case here, the room shares a common wall with the kitchen, but can only be accessed by going through the hall. In a perfect world, I would have enough money to knock out all or part of the wall like my neighbors have, but in my perfect world, the room behind the wall would not be more of  the kitchen or a den, it would still be my scraproom. Only, it would be so perfectly organized and luxuriously furnished I would not mind one bit if everyone visiting my home could see inside. However, even if my sketch even addressed that dream, it did not address the current reality - more so now than in the past - that the vast majority of my supplies are against that wall. It also did not address the current reality that I do not have a job, nor would have I had enough income even when I did, to afford a remodeling project or anything but this "shabby chic" mix of thrift store finds and one new but dirt cheap bookcase.

Even so, after getting the cheap bookcase, I have since taken one additonal step in the reorganization process. I used to keep all my loose scrapbook papers in the plastic shelves where you now see scrapbooks. They are now in the burgundy paper keeper next to it. This freed up a lot of room in the middle of the floor. I still also need to free up some space elsewhere for the blue storage container next to it, because right now it prevents me from putting a chair at the desk. Hence, the desk is good for storing things, like the layouts in progress, but not necessarily for creating things. And I know there are things here and there that could be improved, like what to do with the clutter on the desk, how to make the supplies pictured here more easily accessible, maybe even making that bookcase look a little less cluttered too. And is it possible to make my "shabby chic" a little more chic than shabby?

But what I have right now is a dream compared to what I had in 2010. So, I'm not even going to draw out a new dream . I am just going to go along for the ride of Round 6 and hope the finished product is way better than this Beginning of Round 6 midpoint.

Color studies

I'm going to let you in on one of my best scrapbooking secrets here. Scrapbook.com has a tool that makes picking colors easy! Just add a photo and look at the colors it chooses. Do any of those colors make a pleasing color combo? Then that's the colors you should use! Even if they aren't the colors you were thinking of.

Are those colors not making any combinations you like? Then pick one of the colors, just one, any one. Even if you're surprised to see it as one of the choices. Just make it a color you like.

Now pick any one of the schemes on the right. Because I am sure that since you liked the one color you picked, you will also like the colors that combine with in monochromatic, complementary, analogous or split complementary or triadic color schemes. At least you will like one of those combos, maybe more. But just pick one from there.

Now that you've identified two, three or four colors that you like, you will use those colors to select what else you need. Theoretically, that stuff will match the colors in the combination you just selected. But it may only inspire them.

Here is a layout that is my case in point.

The color scheme I picked from scrapbook.com capitalized on the green that is predominant in these photos, and the orange that many of the runners are wearing.  From the orange, I selected the triadic color scheme, which throws in a green a little darker than the one woman' shirt, a blue the color of Don's shorts and a little darker orange. Based on that scheme, I picked both of the green pattern papers in this page, the grass and the geometric shaped print. I was not able to find a suitable orange paper among those I already own, but I did find this yellow polka-dot paper. And yellow and green is a nice combo to me! My almost high school, Le Grand, had it for school colors. (Really glad I got to stay at Chowchilla High and its red and white though.) Because of things that coordinate with the yellow paper, I also changed the blue to a lighter shade. Although the blue is almost cobalt on the far left circle (which is not cut off in real life), in the C in camp and all the letters in Corona, even that blue is lighter than I had originally planned, and the more predominant blue, in the pinwheels, in three of the other circles, and in one of the O's in Boot, is almost pastel. But I think it works, especially since I also was able to incorporate three shades of orange in the words Boot Camp and the circles on the bottom. I have been loving the colors in this Splash collection of Echo Park (from either summer 2010 or 2011), for awhile, so I hope when I run out of Splash, something else is out there with them.

I'm working on another layout right now that took this color matching tool a step farther. The photo for that layout is of my granddaughter wearing yellow pajamas. I would have thought some kind of cheery yellow would have shown up as one of the color choices, but that did not happen. Instead, a shade of lavender was one of the predominant colors. I love lavender, and that's the complement of yellow, so I went with it!

If you use the complementary scheme with most shades of lavender, it will give you three hues of lavender and one of turquoise to choose from. To me, lavender and turquoise are lovely together, but when scrapbooking a little girl in that combo, pink is a great addition. And so, I found in my stash of supplies a few lavender things that would work, and a bunch of pink and turquoise things. I actually do have a lot of lavender things, but  how I decide which things to look at first, and which to use, is a little bit of trial and error I think most artists of any kind may be familiar with. But I still was not expecting what happened. When the page came together, there was absolutely no lavender on it. Just pink and turquoise. I love it, and I hope Abigail will too. She's getting this page, along with an entire scrapbook about the time she was ages 1and 2, for her third birthday.

Me? Organized?

Over at one of my favorite scrapbooking websites, Two Peas in a Bucket, they have started the Organize Your Stuff Challenge, Round 6. This means participants who see it through to the end will again spend 29 weeks taking serious looks at the rooms or corners of rooms where they keep their scrapbooking supplies (and where some of them, in fact do their scrapbooking). In theory, by the end of the 29 weeks, they will have some very nice scrap rooms.

This is Round 6 because different groups of Peas have already gone through the process five other times, starting back in 2009. I signed up for rounds 1 and 2 with good intentions. Both times, the overwhelming amount of CRAP I had all over my scrap room left me feeling discouraged at Round 2, and I dropped out. I mean, the first time, we still had the dreaded and used one time guest bed in there. The second time, I was able to figure out that what I needed, instead of the departed guest bed, was a bookcase where I could put some of the things I used to store on the bed. I don't think I was able to buy that bookcase until about a year later, when I finally found one at Target that fit my budget. Because it fits my budget and was purchased new, you know it's not the sturdiest bookcase out there, but it is working so far.

However, I decided the bookcase is not sturdy enough to hold the growing collection of scrapbooks. So that really left two places for them. The clear full shelf under my scrap desk, and the closet shelf. New books are all eventually going to end up in that scrap desk, you see. The closet is for the OLD books. But the books in progress needed to be somewhere easier to get to than under my scrapbook desk. For a long time that was the floor. That made my scraproom look just as messy as ever, because with the books on the floor, I sometimes had trouble getting to other supplies that were more neatly put away.

Finally, a few weeks ago, I came up with my own solution. My large but not too large collection of loose papers are now in an accordian file cabinet that was mostly just collecting useless papers, some dating back to my days in the High Desert. (We moved to Riverside in 2005, and what is now known as Jurupa Valley the following year.) Because that file cabinet (just a little paper thing) has 14 dividers, I have been able to not only sort my paper by color, but do some further sorting within each color. I only had eight places to put these papers in its previous location, which is a set of stacking trays. Instead, about 10 of my scrapbooks are now in the trays. These are the ones I work on all the time (My Jurupa Valley scrapbook, my life in general scrapbook, and my granddaughter's scrapbook are the main ones, although a recently purchased scrapbook that's now in the bookcase will be joining the others in the trays just as soon as James is born.)

I didn't know the Two Peas Organize Your Stuff challenge would be coming back for Round 6. Rounds 1-5 came fairly quick, almost one after another, but the longer-term participants in those rounds were ready for a break after the last one. And break they did, for at least six months.

But it is back as of Sept. 10. And I'm glad, because this time I know Round 2 won't make me fling my arms in despair. I'm ready to get this room REALLY organized.

Week 1's challenge is simply to make a scrapbook page. Easy enough, but then you have to analyze how easy it was for you to find the things you needed to make the page.

I've done that now too, for both the page I had created on Sept. 9, and the one that I am almost finished with today. And I am happy to say that finding the most important thing after pictures, which is paper, was very easy to find. So were all the tools I needed, which was the paper trimmer, the glue, a pad of ink and a binder full of letter stickers.  And, in the case of today's layout, so were all the embellishments. I just need to remember the adage, "Everything has a place, and keep everything in its place."

One of the other very important things on most scrapbook pages, besides pictures and paper, is embellishments. The other is lettering, which technically means the letters used to write the title of the page and the story told on the page, a.k.a. journaling. Since the vast majority of scrapbookers either handwrite or type out on computer their journaling, lettering decisions USUALLY focus on letters used in a title. I am happy to say that in both of my recent layouts, those were easy decisions.

The layout I did on Sunday (actually Sunday and Monday) was a bit less easy to complete, and that's because I had trouble figuring out the embellishments. To begin with this layout is about Riverside Road Runners. The facing page in my book that is also about RRR relied on a clip art of a running shoe I created digitally, but I did not want to do the same thing on this page. So, I was looking for generic embellishments that said "summer," but were not of any theme in particular beyond that. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, nothing I owned in the way of embellishments seemed to work. That's usually my cue to go scrapbook shopping, but I only had time to go to the stores on Canyon Springs Parkway on the far east side of Riverside ( a large Michael's, a normal sized Joann's and a normal-sized Target). While things there were cute, not cute enough to make me want them. So I ended up making some embellishments from a scrap of paper. Yeah me!

Sometimes, that's not what happens after an unsuccessful embellishment shopping trip. I end up calling the page "done" and moving on, sans any embellishments. Then a few months later, I find something in my Could Be Much Better Organized stash that I had not thought of before. I don't know if my embellishments could be organized well enough to prevent that from happening, but I'm hoping to find out on Round 6 of the Organize Your Stuff Challenge.

Such drama!

There were two layouts I had in my existing collection that fit other challenges for the crop I am working on. one of them was this one, Tarnished Gold.

The assignment was, for "Drama Class," to do a layout about something dramatic. And for those who don't know the saga behind this layout, has it ever been dramatic. Hopefully, the series finale is coming soon, and Jurupa Valley will get the stolen money back and live happily ever after.

The clincher has come, it did so Sept. 1 when the Legislature passed legislation to restore the $6 million + each year Jurupa Valley had been counting on, but has never received because the state redirected Vehicle License Funds away from cities on June 28, 2011 - two days before Jurupa Valley's official incorporation. We were supposed to build a surplus during our first year, and we did. It was $3 million instead of $10 million. We were supposed to have a budget of $24 million this year, and right now we don't. Without the VLF, it's only $18 million. We cut our police force by 10 percent, but how much can a city cut when it's just getting started? For us, there would have been no way we could have cut enough. We will be toast if Gov. Brown does not sign the legislation. He has until Sept. 30. The Senate passed the legislation unanimously, the Assembly by a more than-two thirds vote.

But there are some villians in this drama. Most county governments, except Riverside of course, are opposed to this legislation because if more new cities incorporate, there is a slight potential it will mean less money for their existing cities law enforcement programs. At this time, the legislation is Jurupa Valley's only hope for survival, and will greatly help three other new cities in Riverside County (Eastvale, Menifee and Wildomar) and 144 others throughout California that incorporated territory and would have to make cutbacks somewhere to serve all of the new people without VLF. These villians are worried about what could happen, and in their mind, the potential inconvenience of that  trumps Jurupa Valley's survival and the ill effects on 147 other cites. The Los Angeles Times is also a villain in this drama, as it callously dismisses the four most severely affected cities as "unnecessary."

So, I am asking anyone who lives in California - especially ANYWHERE in Riverside County - to go to Jurupa Valley's website (www.jurupavalley.org) and find addresses of the governor's staff to write letters encouraging his support for AB 1098. This is important in such places as Fontana (where a large annexation happened) and in east Los Angeles County (where there is perennial talk of creating ONE MORE CITY), and in Madera County where it is hoped the orderly development of Rio Mesa will eventually lead to both the much less orderly developed Oakhurst and Rio Mesa joining Madera and Chowchilla as cities. In 2008, Oakhurst said no to cityhood the day Wildomar said yes. Oakhurst probably loves their 20/20 hindsight now, but I'm sure those people want the option to revisit cityhood some day.

And it's really important for Jurupa Valley, and for me.

Update (12/15/12): I was just looking at this and realized I failed to update all that the drama continues. Gov.  Brown did veto the bill in mid-September. We now have elected a Democrat to the state Senate, he is sworn in, and fixing this problem will be his second highest priority. His top priority is getting a medical school at UC Riverside. I wish him well on both endeavors, although I wish his priorities were reversed.

And now, three months later, we've all learned the Governor is being treated for prostate cancer. I have to say I hope he gets well soon, but I also have to wonder - Karma?

Some scrapbooking fun

Hapy Grandparents' Day everyone! I was so happy to be wished one myself by my stepdaughter, who is a mom to 1.9 kids (the younger expected to arrive any day now). And it was so fun to see my friend Thena Cullen Smith's pages about her grandparents that she's been posting on Facebook this morning, especially since those are true heritage pages, as Thena is at least old enough to be a grandmother herself.

I may or may not celebrate Grandparents' Day with my scrapbooking. I have an idea to do one page about Abigail, but seeing Thena's pages makes me wonder if I should just do something about my own, now all deceased, grandparents instead.

The page about Abigail I have planned would fit in with a very fun online crop I have discovered.  Back 2 Class doesn't mean much here of course. The only person in school at this time is Don, and he was not only taking classes all summer, he was also volunteering all summer in a classroom at a year-round school, a class that went off track in September. I will be joining Don at school in October, although I will be going to UCR-Extension instead of CBU. So with the elementary school class and my class starting in October, I guess that's really back-to-school month for us.

But the Back 2 Class Online Crop is fun. It offers multiple challenges, each based on a certain subject you might have taken at some point in school. You can submit one layout for each challenge. Unfortunately, the requirement is one layout, one challenge, and it must be a new layout.

My problem is, one of my layouts fits at least five of their challenges, and I actually created it with Friday's CSIColorStories challenge in mind, not this one. Another one of the challenges inspired me to redo the page about what I did on my 50th birthday. I of course finished that page some six months ago, but the challenge helped me give it some more oomph, so for that I am glad. Sunday, I saw that it also would have fit a second challenge.

And so far, I have done one page that fits one challenge of this online crop. In addition, there were five existing layouts that fit one of the challenges. In those cases, I hope a great crop like this will inspire some new ones as well, but I usually have to have some more of a starting point than  these challenges offer. That's why I often combine crop challenges.

I'm going to share all three of the recently completed or redone pages here, as well as what I posted to CSI on Friday night before redoing for this crop. In the post after this, I'm sharing an existing layout that fit the crop's "drama" challenge, because you all need to know the state/local political drama that has been going on here for 14 months, and has influenced how I think about government.

My original Run 2012 layout as posted on CSI Color Stories

The redo, which fits the Back2Class Online Crop's Math assignment, which is to use four pattern papers, three cardstock pieces (I used four), four of one emellishment (green flowers), three of another (white flowers) and 14 of something else (brads.) This layout also fits the crop's journalism assignment (write at least three to four sentences of journaling), the recess assignment (use a photo of outdoor activity), the and the physical education assignment (use a photo showing motion). It even fits the somewhat more complicated health assignment, which was to do a layout focusing on my (the scrapbooker's) body. Although there is a group of us in this photo, that's me in the orange shirt and white shorts. The journaling I had already done tells how running has affected me physically, and concludes with my desire to run farther and faster in the rest of 2012.  I did not run today, but I did walk nine miles this morning with some of these same people.

The health assignment also specified to use things starting with the letters B-O-D-Y. This layout already had that. It uses brads, one photo, Die Cuts With A View brand paper (known as DCWV in the scrapbooking world) and yellow cardstock.

I have come along ways since this day a little more than six months ago. On that day, my actual 50th birthday, I went three miles with Riverside Road Runners beginners' group, running part of the way and sprinting into Arlington Heights Sports Park at the end of my workout. Then I did everything you see pictured here. A few days later, I made this layout, but a little differently than what you see here. It was the perfect candidate for the Back2Class online crop's Home Ec class, which required following a recipe of five pattern papers, a border punched element, "stitching" a pennant and a butterfly element. I already had two of the pattern papers and the pendant on the page, but this redo required a little bit of lifting up and fixing. The red strip 2/3 of the way down, already cut on its jagged printed lines, is now border-punched as well. Above that, and above the pendant, there is some purple fiber. Since I don't have a sewing machine and punching this background paper full of needle holes wasn't an acceptable option, I like how the fiber resembles "messy" stitching. The pendant itself was made of the same three colors of solid papers, but I like these patterns. The pink and lavender ones have been in my stash since about 2005, the Basic Grey almost as long, and the red pendant paper is something I once received in a swap. Lastly, I added a butterfly, cut from pattern paper I bought in June. Sometimes you just have to wait until something good comes along.

This is the one layout that I made so far only because of the Back2Class Online Crop. The "reading" assignment provides a list of current best-selling book titles, one of which is The Dog Stars. That book surely must be about these adorable pooches a friend (somewhat related) placed on Facebook a few days ago. So they deserved to be captured on page.

They have some more classes for me to work on today. Yearbook is my next choice. You know how some lucky students were given the superlatives like "Best Looking" or "Most Spirited?" The assignment is to make a layout giving someone one of those superlative students.

I was not awarded a superlative, and I'm not sure if my stepdaughter was, but we can hope my granddaughter will receive one in 2028. For now, she's definitely already caught onto her mom's love of Ohio State, because Holly sent me a really cute picture of Abigail in a Buckeye dress. So, she will be my subject for the next assignment, most likely. Stay tuned.

Thoughts about Rubidoux

To pass the time on some hot summer days, I wrote an essay about Rubidoux, the oldest and most urbanized community in Jurupa Valley. Then I took a picture of some pretty trees, replicated them in my art journal, and added a bit of my original essay.

The prompt from CSI Color Stories International prompted me to draw the trees again and write yet another short essay about relaxing and drawing trees at the Rubidoux Library.  An then I wrote the epic essay posted below.

Update: Summer's over! The scary finances I've been weaving into this essay were improved in one way already, and likely will be vastly more improved tomorrow. And then even more vastly improved on Saturday, when Don starts getting his Air Force pension.

I haven't had the best summer, and that may be part of why I haven't been diligent with this blog. But that's an excuse, a copout even. Because today's probably one of the worst days of days that have been going progressively downhill, and in that downhill spiral, I've come up with something good to write.

I have to be honest about the direction my life is going right now. Other than the blessing of having two job interviews this month (bringing the grand total I've had all year to five), I pretty much am an old, possibly retired lady of 50. I have all the time in the world it seems. And of course, nowhere near enough money to match that time. In fact, all this week,  EDD decided to hold up funds until they figure out that they have to extend my claim instead of giving me a new one, which in essence means they've decided my husband and I do not actually need an income to survive.

 Meanwhile, my husband, who just turned 60, is not quite in the same situation. He is very busy completing requirements for a course at CBU. In fact, CBU is on summer break, but they're requiring him to complete some extra work so they will give him transfer credit for a course he took at University of Phoenix awhile back. There are two phases to this. First, he tutors a third-grade boy at an elementary school. Second, he goes home and completes very time intensive assignments related to that tutoring. Except that he has not stayed home to do this lately. Because of the extreme heat the past two weeks, he has opted most of the days to go to the local library instead.

Now, when Don goes somewhere I have the (very unappealing to me) choice of staying home without a car, or going with him. The elementary school isn't any of the ones near here. Because when he started the tutoring project in June, with a different boy who is now in fourth grade, it was for a summer quarter course at CBU. Problem was, the local schools were getting ready to go on summer break at that time. So, he had to find a school in Corona-Norco School District, which has year-round elementary schools, at which he could do this tutoring. That ended up being Eastvale Elementary School, which is of course in Eastvale. That's a 20-minute drive from here, maybe 25. Don tutors for 90 minutes, so that really doesn't give me enough time to justify coming back home. So, in spite of financial troubles, I have at least a small Cafe Americano at Starbucks in Eastvale, and often a medium-sized Carmel Macchiato and/or a scone. In spite of having no money in the checking account, I probably will even do that on Monday, because we do have money on Don's Starbuck's card. I think EDD is going to make a determination about my claim Monday afternoon, which will hopefully mean we have money on Tuesday. If not, we will limp through this entire week as best we can, and at long last, Don will start receiving his military pension next Saturday!

When at Starbucks, I spend the time checking my email. my Facebook, some job boards and Two Peas in A Bucket's message boards. I may need more time than my less than 90 minutes at Starbucks to do all that, but usually by late morning, or early afternoon at the latest, I am done with my daily computer routine. And there are still hours to kill. I often fill them with scrapbooking, but I'm not always so motivated.

I actually started a new hobby, art journaling, earlier this year. I of course also have the hobby of running, but that one has been a little difficult when it's 90 degrees at 6 a.m. and cooled back down to that at 9 p.m. Daytime temps in mid-August soared to well over 100, maybe 110. We just needed to find a cool place and sit, and that's the library.

I've made it a rule that I will buy NO new art supplies for the art journal, so I tend to rely on my old acrylic paints and very old scraps of paper, along with other scrapbooking and stamping supplies. to make this art journal . Since I can't really take bits of paper, paint, ink, etc. to the library, sI spent most of the time while we were there reading scrapbooking books. I'm grateful this is a large library, so large I wasn't able to read all these books during this period we were hanging out there. But another part of the reason I didn't finish them all is I just got tired of reading books all day. So, I tried to do the journaling part of my art journals on two of the days.

I'm using prompts I found on the website daisyyellowsquarespace.com. It's one of the best art journal blogs out there, and her "Kick Start Your Art Journal" archived section was the best thing for a beginning art journaler. I'm actually almost done working my way through the kick start prompts, and will soon be using her more recent, always updated posts for more great ideas. But recently, I was working on a prompt that suggested I find an unusual place to journal. To me, that would not be a library. But it would be the Bakers' Restaurant about one mile down the street from the library.

The library and Bakers are on Mission Drive, which is as "downtown" as you can get in Jurupa Valley. Mission Drive is the heart of Rubidoux, which was a community before the turn of the 20th century. Rubidoux alone is a community of more than 20,000 residents, so I'm not really sure why it never incorporated into a city prior to 2011. It certainly could have been a city in 1911,  and by the early 21st Century was a blighted semi-urban area.

Before and even for a short time after the city incorporated, Riverside County had used what was known as "redevelopment money" (another source of funds the state of California has taken away from local governments) to revive what had been a stale neighborhood. Buildings were cleaned up and given attractive storefronts, in fact the library and a few other county-run buildings were built from the ground up with redevelopment. Also, the median along the entire length of Mission Drive, at least from north of the library to the Riverside city limit, was spruced up.

The good work was either in the process or started shortly after we moved to Jurupa Valley in 2006. I want to say, but can't remember for sure, that the huge flowering trees were there before the project began, and redevelopment simply allowed the county to give them a good trim. In either case, they are now attractive trees and a dominant feature of what you see when you look at "downtown" in my city.

After writing an essay at Bakers, about Rubidoux and its troubles, I returned to the library and took a photograph while stopped at one of the four lights between the restaurant and the library. The trees dominate the photo. These particular trees were in the middle of the street in front of a mostly vacant lot, where a grocery store would have been built had the state allowed Riverside County to keep enough redevelopment to finish the project.

So, when I got back to the library, I decided to draw a picture of the trees and write a little bit about Rubidoux in my art journal. And a few days later, back home in the Jurupa Hills part of Jurupa Valley, I drew another picture of the trees, glued them to a 12 x 12 cardstock sheet and journaled about my life as it is this weekend. Doing that makes my life, and Rubidoux, look a little better.

The cats and a crafty project or two

Besides a granddaughter and a whole bunch of other little kids to love on (grandnieces, grandnephews, and three boys belonging to two of my cousins, all of whom are two and younger, our "kids" include two cats. Like all cats, they are usually a source of joy and amusement to us, but sometimes a source of frustration. Lombard because he's a little shy at times, Segunda because she acts either rambunctious or just plain stupid at times. Saturday night, she ended up being both. She leaped from the top of Don's easy chair onto the TV tray in front of him, knocking his computer down and breaking four keys. She was completely oblivious that she had done anything wrong!

This could hardly have come at a worse time. Don is in the thick of finishing assignments for the end of the CBU term the end of this month. One of them, a final project in his Educational Computing class, is due tonight.  He already felt hamstrung by having Powerpoint 2003 instead of 2010 on the computer, but now not having use of four keys was almost enough to set him over the edge. He was ready to take Segunda back to the animal shelter where we found her, and possibly send Lombard there with her. Thankfully, we still have our kitties, and Don has figured out a way to get his assignment done without those four keys (it does entail borrowing my computer sometimes.)

I had  selected a photo of Segunda to use for a weekly scrapbooking challenge at CSI Color Stories. The scrapbooking challenges the website's host, Debbi Tehrani, puts up here now, and put up at the scrapbooking site Two Peas In A Bucket until recently, have been creative diversions for me every week for about seven years. This  year we were challenged to do scrapbook pages with the colors of  orange (a yellowish shade of it), yellow, grey, black and white. Doing pages about reading was an optional component of the challenge. When I saw this photo of Segunda on Friday afternoon, it seemed like the perfect fit. I had thought, that since these were cookbooks, I would pretend Segunda could actually read them and was telling me which seafood recipe I should prepare for her.

We then went away until late Saturday afternoon. We weren't home very long when Segunda knocked Don's computer off the TV tray. That quickly changed how I felt about doing a scrapbook page accusing
Segunda of being smart enough to read cookbooks!

But, CSI has had a new thing for about a month. There are little doodads you can download off its website that go with the color scheme of the week. Some of these doodads are words you can use as titles. One of these, this week, was a phrase "Imagination is More Important than Knowledge." Bingo! That's exactly how I feel about Segunda. I love how imaginative she is most of the time. It doesn't matter that knowledge, even cat knowledge, seems to elude her.

And so I created a page focusing on that reality. Well, that's my title and the journaling explains why. CSI is about stories, and if you didn't really want to write about reading this week writing about monsters and adventures were OK too.  Life is an adventure with this monster cat.

The rest of a CSI page is about getting all the colors and certain embellishments (i.e. layered embellishments and metal things, which fits all of these flowers.) Most of the pages you would see on CSI are quite a bit more embellished than mine. It must be nice having the kind of money to throw that many embellishments on one page - I did not even when I was working. I don't know how they get other pages done each week.

But, I digress. The thing is, one flower especially on my scrapbook page, the one on the lower left hand corner, is highly creative for me. I made it myself, by hand, from foil. And a few visitors to my blog are probably wondering how I did that. So, for them, I offer these instructions:

1. Cut or punch three circles or scalloped circles from a sheet of foil. If you've got a circle cutter, die cutting tool or punches that will do this, it's easy. If you're like me, take three increasingly larger flower stamps and trace around them. Cut those out with scissors. Not quite as easy, but you can do it. You can also freehand cut three increasingly larger circles if you don't have any tools that will help.

2. Lightly crumple each of your circles, and unfold. If you have a Cuttlebug or other embossing tool, you could possibly just emboss texture into them instead of going for the crumpled look.

3. (Optional) Ink the circles. My three layers of flower actually have been dipped, front side down, into three different ink pads - two shades of yellow and one shade of gold. I am sure this hardly shows up on the scan, it isn't much better in real life. But, in real life, there is a subtle sheen of yellow on each layer.  Very subtle because I heatset the ink to help it dry faster. This was fine for awhile. I made this flower in a Two Peas card making event about six months ago. I never got it onto a card then, but it sat in my stash of flowers until now. And then some of the dried ink flaked right off the flower. Lesson learned: Don't heatset the ink if you're not putting the flower on a card.

4. Secure all three layers with a brad and attach to your card or page.

What Grandpa's up to

Although this blog is about my life as a grandmother, I would not be a grandmother if I were not married to Abigail's biological maternal grandfather, Don Porter. He is the star of my life. And he is the driving force behind a new scrapbooking project I embarked upon today.

Don decided in January that it is not time for him to retire, so he has gone back to school to obtain a special education teaching credential. He is taking an introductory teaching course this semester, which has an interesting final project.

He will have to address 10 foundations of education, and present them in some sort of artistic fashion. Although this could have been a brochure, a poster or something presented electronically, the instructor showed a sample that from Don's description sounds like an art journal. Since I have just started making one for myself, I offered to make an art journal for Don as well. But we've decided instead that we will make a scrapbook.

So, today I planned backgrounds and pulled scrapbook papers for these pages. I will need to print photos and stamp or otherwise embellish some things as well. The journaling, however, will be left up to Don. I believe he will be able to get each of his 10 topics onto one page in the 8x8 scrapbook album he has chosen, but if we are mistaken, I will also need to make pockets for his journaling.

It's late, so I will begin nailing down the details of my part tomorrow.

I also worked on one more page of my art journal this morning. I used my one bottle of spray ink to create the background for this page. While spray ink is one of the newest and hottest ways to embellish paper art, I have only been able to justify purchasing one color, and that was while I was working. So there is an area of the page that I am going to have to color some other way. I'll either water color or attempt to spray my watered down baby blue paint on this.

After I finished the spray job and left it to dry, I went with Don to school. I normally do this, and then hang out in that neighborhood of Riverside until he's done with class. I spent today at Barnes and Noble reading the latest issue of Scrapbooks Etc. (and found one more idea for a new scrapbook page to do on a growing list of random scrapbook pages I might want to do.)

But when Don was done with school, he wanted to eat lunch, go to Michael's to look at art journals, scrapbooks and scrapbook supplies (although I advised him we should try to use the many papers we have at home, at least until we figured out an idea). He then got his haircut while I hung out at Canyon Crest Shopping Center. I found a cool shop where you buy and paint ceramics, which they then glaze for you. So in a week, I will be the proud owner of a coffee mug I painted myself. It's a $23 coffee mug, so I won't be creating matched sets anytime soon, but it was a fun way to while away the time.

Just as Don got out of the car to go to our hair stylist, he noticed we had run over a screw that was imbedded in our tire. Since that probably had created a slow leak, we took it over to Kurt's Auto as soon as he was done. They plugged it for free!

Don also wanted to go to the commissary, since we were in that neighborhood. We didn't get home until about 6 p.m., so and after dinner we spent until now planning his new book. So that left me no time to work on my own projects, or even house cleaning, as it is now time for bed. So good night, and happy creating.

Day 2 of the Creativity Queue Challenge

My most recent creations in the Art Journal

I just wanted to update on my art journal project, since this is Day 2 of the Creativity Queue Challenge at Daisy Yellow.

Monday, I posted the first of these two when it was in process. I had created the yellow background with paint, watercolors and ink. I still have a lot to learn about all those mediums, but I'm looking forward to doing so in this process.

I do like how this one turned out. The new background is Christmas wrapping paper, depicting a "Holy Land" scene with the three wise men. But when I put a rectangle of white paper on top of it, only a palm tree remained. And palm trees are one of the many things that make me think of my own homeland, southern California. I have lived in California since just before I was 2, but only about half of that time in southern California. So when I think of the state as a whole, I also think of the Gold Country. Thinking about yellow and the state of California makes me think of a number of things, so I listed them here, then ran the yellow watercolor pencil and brush over the journaling.

Today, I created another art journal entry, and this one uses a medium I am a little more familiar with. Although I can't say I have ever made a frame like the ones on this second art journal page on a scrapbook page, this was a good use of some really old scraps. I mean, I've had those yellow and green scraps since I lived in Apple Valley. So that's somewhere between 8 1/2 and 10 1/2 years. I have had the red scraps quite awhile too, and the blue and purple ones for a few years. Since I never throw my scraps away until they are tiny, this was a good way to use some up.

I have been scrapbooking the past two days as well. I haven't finished my most recent creation yet, just everything except the journaling. I may post it soon. It's going into Abigail's second year album, as it is about how she and her parents celebrated St. Patrick's Day. Instead, here is a recent layout of her (but not a recent photo) that I'm keeping for myself.

I still enjoy scrapping Abigail's baby photos, but I need to do more of her as a 1-year-old

That album is slow in coming. I am not sure why. When she was born in 2010, I was excited about becoming a grandmother, and wanted to do lots of pages about her. But I knew I couldn't scrap every photo of her when Holly sent us about 400 of them in Abigail's first month, maybe 1,000 in her first six months. Still, the Two Peas board inspired me to do some pages, and some of those important milestones in her first year inspired me to do some more. I sent Holly a good-sized book for Abigail's first birthday. But now she's 18 months old, and I have done all of seven pages for the new album. Her 1st birthday, Halloween, Christmas, that very important announcement about a future new sibling we received in January, and now St. Patrick's Day.

I don't even know that I would have started, except that her first birthday photos matched Challenge 2 over at Color Stories International. That prompted me to do the first page. Challenge 10 also prompted me to scrap a photo of her - a baby photo that I will keep for myself.

Getting caught up on our own 2012 photos prompted me to do a few more pages for Abigail, including St. Patrick's Day. But I hope something comes along soon to challenge me to do a few of the more every day photos. I suspect in the past year Holly has only posted a few hundred photos on her blog, as opposed to sending us 1,000 in the first six months through Kodak Share. But 1,000, 500 or 100, I still can't scrap them all. But I will keep you posted on what I do scrap.

Journaling with art

This page sums up what my art journal, and most of the five pages I have completed so far are all about.

To Don's delight, my first project in my new venture focuses on our favorite songs.

I am not sure how today's art journal project will end up.

As many of you know, I am a writer by profession, and probably always will be to some degree. As most of you probably also know, I have been a scrapbooker for about a decade. I now have more than a decade worth of scrapbook pages, following a decision I made in 2001 that my photos deserved better treatment than to simply be stuck in a photo album.

In 2001, I believed a prevailing thought that "something better" for photos was 12 x 12 scrapbooks, and the cardstock a few companies were making to use with them. Patterned paper could also be added, although in 2001, most of it was sold at an 8.5 x 11 size. Stickers could - and should - also be added, in the very same theme of your photos.

In 2001 the paper arts world was getting away from this simple treatment, I soon learned. Brads, eyelets, stamped images and so much more became popular on pages. But having "grown up" back in the days when a newspaper page was a paper craft unto itself (that is, before the newspapers I worked for invested in the computer technology to do it digitally), I resisted doing more than photos, journaling and adding some color and other interest with paper and stickers.

Eventually a class at my then-local, then in business scrapbook store (RIP Scrapbook Story of Victorville), got me over that hurdle. The website Two Peas in a Bucket. com was also a guiding force in my development as a scrapbooker. Through it, I have always known what the latest scrapbooking and other artistic trends are. (For instance hexagons are in this year! That would explain why Sandals Church keeps using them on the bulletins and videos for the MOVE series!) I have also found the inspiration to use these new ideas on my scrapbooking and cardmaking projects. Don's Valentine had hexagons on it.

Two Peas, for so many years, had challenges that kept me motivated to do new scrapbooking projects on almost a daily basis. Of course, with a full-time job, I really couldn't quite do a scrapbook page a day, but I tried. And since 2009 when I got my digital camera, I usually had a whole bunch of photos that NEEDED to be scrapbooked. Not always, but when I didn't there was always a Two Peas challenge or two to motivate me. And if not on Two Peas, I could usually find one somewhere else.

Lately that has not been the case. Challenges I had been doing for years on Two Peas have either disappeared or been scaled way back, as their hosts have been off to new ventures. And for whatever reason, the projects "somewhere else" don't always captivate me.

Of course, lately, it has been easy for me to work on something creative almost every day. I am essentially unemployed, except that I have been blessed to find one freelance writing project, so I can still call myself a professional writer. I'm also very hamstrung in my efforts to find a new job. I'm now over 50 (49 most of the time of this job search), Don and I only have one car, and if I take the car to go to networking events, Don will use that as an excuse to stay at home. The primary networking group I want to attend is at the same time Don needs to be at school.

It seems, after a few months of therapy to deal with all this, letting go of my dreams and accepting the life I have for what is good about it is the best approach. My therapy also recommends that I process the negative feelings I have about it by journaling. Which I do. At least five minutes a day. I also journal, in a sense, on these two blogs I maintain.

But although Two Peas as a whole seems to be in a bit of an artistic rut, I have to credit a recent post about art journals for pulling my creativity in a new direction. Art journals are not a new thing. I think they have been around for a long time, like scrapbooking had been when it became such a popular hobby in the 1990s. Art journaling has also been a popular hobby for at least a few years now, but I always looked at it as something for ARTISTS, not JOURNALISTS. Even one previous attempt at art journaling left me shaking my head, as those entries were not artistic.

But the recent Two Peas post led me to discover a new website, all about art journaling. The website is called Daisy Yellow. Looking around there last week, I discovered approximately 90 ideas for making very creative pages. I wanted to do this ! Helping matters a great deal, the first two ideas were to make an art journal page with circles, and to make an art journal page about your favorite music album. I opted instead to make a page, with circles. I mean, we are so into music circles here, I first wrote "your favorite record album" before remembering I am quite possibly the only art journal artist who would automatically think of records when thinking of music albums. I opted to do my first art journal page about our song rating project.

Since then, I have done 4 more pages, and a sixth is in progress. Daisy Yellow is a blog, and today is beginning a project called The Creativity Queue Challenge. The challenge is that on the eight days it is running, we will post about any creative things we have done. And that's why I'm posting about my art journal here today.

I'm working with one of her Kick Start Your Art Journal prompts, as I most likely will be for awhile. This prompt encourages us to start by painting a yellow background with various yellow paints. Instead, I have used my one yellow paint, my one yellow water pencil and my one tin of yellow stamping ink to create a new background. The challenge says to add gift wrap and then journal on white cardstock about what yellow means to me, which I probably will do later today. Also, having read another participants' blog entry about making her own stamps, I am inspired to add images created by one of the hundred or so stamps I already own to this project. After I finish it, I may then start on a second art journal page, or I may save that for another day.

First, as soon as this blog entry is finished, I am going to go for a run.

Oh, I did one more creative, artsy thing today too and it's kind of related. Thinking about yellow last weekend, when I first typed the list of the Kick Start Your Art Journal prompts, I noticed my neighbors have yellow roses blooming in front of their lemon tree. What a contrast of yellow plants! I decided then it would make a good photograph, and today I photographed them. I only took a few shots and will not develop them until the roll is done (I'm thinking after Easter?), but I'll be glad to share my photo with you then. Until then, enjoy my new art projects.