December wallpaper

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November Art Journaling

The last day of NaNoJouMo is Nov. 30. I'm happy to say I've finished 27 of the 30 prompts. Here's a peak at some of my pages.

Pinterest

Yea, like I needed a new addiction. ENTER if you dare.

Grateful

Happy holiday!

Off I go to make pies :)

Flora Fantasy - Wool Rug Pattern

I purchased a fair amount of felted wool this past October, wanting to use it to hook some rugs for my home. Most patterns I've seen are too traditional for my taste, so, I plan on designing my own. Some of my sketches and doodles are set aside as possible jumping-off points for ideas, like the one below.

Dear Santa: I've been kinda good!

Start here :)

Christmas!

Everything is coming up Christmas, at least around here. There are lots of retail holiday open houses, boutiques & artisan fairs to choose from this week. One of my faves is the Apron Chicks Barn Sale. Opening day was yesterday, with plenty of Christmas cheer in there! The wood-burning stove was stoked and hot cider and cookies were the treats. I especilaly liked the birds screenprinted onto linen (3rd photo, hanging on stair rail).

Art Journal pages

As I mentioned in my Nov. 1 post, I'm doing art journaling in November with daily prompts provided by Dawn DeVries Sokol. I was delighted to see three of my pages featured on her blog as part of her "Mosaic Monday" post  on Nov. 14! Check it out HERE.  (They are the 3 on the bottom left, numbers 10, 11 and 12). Thank you, Dawn!

Painted flames

I loved this mixed media painting when I did it a few years ago. Then I forgot about it until I found it in a forgotten watercolor paper pad the other day, so that was a nice surprise!

Creating a new art journal

I'm not a scrapbooker be any means, but, as a graphic designer, I am a BIG paper freak. Incognito, I enter Archiver's and go straight for the Basic Grey products. I've glued one of their papers to my paperboard journal cover, below, then added hand lettering.

Here are 4 examples of pages I've painted, collaged, etc., before tape-binding them into my cover. Ready for more paint, markers, or journaling/lettering with micron pens...

Fave local artist

My favorite local artist is Edie Abnet. I love how she stylizes her subject matter. In the painting below, she emphasizes the unique characteristics of both the blue jays (head shape and feather color) and the columbine plant (flower shape) simply and effectively. See more of her beautiful work HERE.

Missing sunshine

Aahhhh, November in Minnesota. I had to make my own sun today. The sun on the left represents me thinking about winter. ;-) The sun on the right represents anticipation for every year's wonderful spring.

Thinking spring already?!

I wasn't even really falling into a winter slump yet! I just started drawing mushrooms and ferns, thinking about a shady forest, which got me thinking about all the cool ferns and other native plants that are in my shade garden that bloom in very early spring.  Here's the doodle, then the plants that inspired me.

Take Flight journal page

I'm excited to be participating in Dawn DeVries Sokol's newest journal e-class, NaNoJouMo. It's free and runs the entire month of November! Click HERE for a description. The first prompt was "Take Flight", which, because I'm a bird freak, made me think of birds! Ironically, the first page in the journal I compiled for this class is a portion of one of my old watercolors of a tree. I added the names of all the birds that visit our feeders.