Good Morning all my beautiful friends and kindred spirits! 
Every time I open my blog and look at my sidebar, I see all these things I need to do. So today, I felt led to leave this note on my blog.

If you don’t see your shop, your name or any mention of you on my blog anywhere here, PLEASE don’t be offended.

It is not because I don’t LOVE you. Lord knows if I visited your site and we are friends or I am following you, then you KNOW I LOVE YOU because I don’t say anything I don’t mean. Well, only occasionally, and then I do a fair amount of apologizing. My point being that I need to do a little housekeeping and updating on my side bar, add some things, remove some things and do a little prissing up. 
Up until this point I have thoroughly been enjoying the “ME” time people always wish for you and tell you how important it is to do that for yourself, and few of us ever do it. Well, I am here to tell you, those people are right! Genius in fact! Yep, it can be done. I tried it, I like it, and I am growing pretty accustomed to it. In fact, I am getting down right lazy!  This has been pretty nice for a change. As a woman who wears many hats, you all know this, you can get stuck in a routine and mind set of  "going, going, hurry, hurry" all the time. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks unless you give them a treat now and then!  So I have been "treating" myself pretty well lately.  I have been working on journals and spending well needed studio time.
Very soon I will be getting back to all my neglected friends, blogs, and all the stuff I dearly LOVE and that includes YOU!  

And you know, spending more time with “ME” and getting re-acquainted with what makes "ME" HAPPY , has not permanently damaged anyone that I know of.  So if you need some “ME” time, and everyone does, don't think of it as a gift to yourself, think of it as a necessity of life.  I assure you that you will wake up happier, more inspired and with a new outlook on it ALL! ….Because we all want it all right?… so take your name off the bottom of the list and move it to the top! 

Sometimes you just have to LEAP… and build your WINGS on the way down!

MAGICAL DAYS IN MAY

In March we started our art journal swap again. This time it was based on chosen colour themes for each individual journal. Each artist chose their colour or colour combination for their journal and two pages are to be completed in each journal using the colour or colour combo chosen by the artist.

Today, I completed my second journal pages belonging to artist and friend Katina Wright. She lives in beautiful Cornwall in the UK. Kat made the most fabulous "journal box". Enclosed were unbound individual pages for each artist including a tag, making it easy peasy to lay work flat. Kat chose the colors Teal, Magenta and Silver, beautiful complimenting colors. There was so much work put into this beautiful box, that you really should see it from The Beginning where Kat shows how she constructed it and all the beautiful stitching that went into it.

             (The magenta color looks red here, but it is really more magenta in person)

Keeping in mind Kat's colors, I also tried to make my pages personal to Kat. Kat makes fabulous Mandalas, so I added a little bit of Mandala love. I also love the texture that card board gives, so adding that when it fits is always fun for me. I also incorporated a few other inspirations of Kat's like butterflies and water. 

 

The first two pages or the full page that I created was a mixed media collage of Magenta and Teal and Butterflies.
I was really happy that silver was one of her colors because I had been saving a shiny silver freshness bag that crackers were sealed in, inside the cracker box just for Kat's silver color. It almost made my circles look like mirrors.   

The Dream page I did was based on a Free Spirit Spotlight interview in which Kat was the featured artist.
She talked about a time in her life when she had not fully embraced herself as the creative artist she is today.
(Who by the way just oozes with talent in so many forms).  I started with a collage first on the entire page and then painted over it so the collage background would come through. The original base collage for this page, I printed and used it for the back side. 

 

This is also being submitted to Inspirational Avenue's weekly challenge hosted by another Kim!

To the tag, I added an original vintage skeleton key that I painted in the colour Teal to symbolize all the doors that will be opened to Kat because in her own words, "With Imagination, everything is Possible".

Last but not least, Kat included a two page booklet for each artist to sign along the way describing how color affects or inspires them.
I had such an amazing time working on Kat's pages and I totally lost myself in her color theme of Teal, Magenta and Silver

When Kat's Journal box returns to her at the end of this year's Magical Journal Journey's , she will have the most gorgeous treasure box to be cherished for sure. 

Tuesday, this Magical Journal box will be on it's way to Stephanie who comes after me in the swap. I am including a special prezzi  for her that she can use after she returns from her trip to PARIS, Yes, PARIS, as in France, not 
Arkansas! :)

I hope you will come again soon and see what colour journal I will be creating in next! 

BONJOUR! 
XO                                
 
 



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SPOILER ALERT ~* MAGICAL JOURNAL JOURNEYS ~*

 Lisa Wright's journal made it's way to my mail box this month.

 This is the second journal for this year's Magical Journal Journeys. There are 9 of us and each person has chosen a color or color combo for their journal in which all artwork must be dominant in that color or colors. Lisa's journal is RUST. I knew I would love working in RUST since I love old and vintage and rusty metals and FALL is my favorite time of year, a great season of inspiration for Rust.

 

 I was excited to see the inside of Lisa's journal since I also planned to use a butterfly on one of my pages for her.
 

My inspiration for this journal began with this brass butterfly that one of my sweet Etsy teamies sent to me knowing that I would incorporate it in some way in my artwork. When I found out that Lisa's journal was RUST, I knew that I had to use this butterfly. It was just a shiny brass butterfly when I received it. I added watch pieces and paint and various found objects. I wanted to work on the butterfly first so that I could take a picture of it to use on one of my journal pages. I am pretty happy with how it turned out, although my picture did not turn out as well of the butterfly itself, but it still worked well with the collage.

Lisa left her pages unbound so that we could take a page and lay it flat making it easier to work with. I followed Tammy's lead who was the first to do pages in Lisa's book. We each do two pages. Like Tammy, I did the front two pages and then turned them over and did the back side as well. It is two pages, back and front or 4 depending on how you look at it. My original plan was to sew on the pages so I did not want to mess up the back sides for someone else. However, I never know how my date with the sewing machine is going to pan out. I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination and I am always pleased that any attempt I make with the sewing machine that works, it a great day. I love the results of sewing on my art so much that I am willing to brave the "evil one" any chance I get. However, today with my sewing began with a disaster that ended quite the opposite. I quickly realized that all the pages I wanted to stitch did not have to be stitched and maybe I just needed to go a different direction. This time I think I made the right choice.

     She took comfort in the colors of her Iron Butterfly

Lisa is the girl with a pen and a paintbrush. She is a writer, an artist and a dreamer of DREAMS. I wanted to incorporate pages not only unique to the color she chose, but to also honor her as a writer. So I wrote a little short story about an artist and writer named LISA and her Magic Seeds. On one of the inserted pages with the story I added one of my grandmother's bookmarks. I often think how proud she would be to know that I love making book tags as much as she did. My grand father would take her every Sunday on drives in the countryside and he would pull over every time she yelled "stop", just so she could get out and pick some wild flowers. She would take these flowers home and press them in books and then later make bookmarks with them. I have cigar box full of these, most are all faded and "rusted" so to speak, but they still have a quality that I find beautiful about them. I guess that's how I feel about Rusty things too..
I thought one of these bookmarks would go well with the story I wrote for Lisa.

I did sew some material onto the front page and a couple tags, but I decided not to chance the pages since my machine was bucking me each time I used it. This is when I can always count on WASHI TAPE.  Washi Tape is my friend. I was able to to add the additional pages to the front side with the washi tape and in my opinion it actually gave it a better look than the stitching would have.

My first page I did a mixed media collage and I decided not to do  a lot of the rest of the pages because I found that the RUST Colors alone were just so beautiful that they stood on their own.

Lisa's journal is beautiful in all it's rust. She did some fun collage work in the back and I love that she create this little hidden box in the back of her book. 

 As I send this journal off now to Stephanie, I will be very excited to see the entire finished journal in all of it's RUSTY BEAUTY when we share our finished journals at the end of this year's journey.

 Thank you for  sharing in Lisa's journal pages with me.
If you would like to see all the 9 Magical Journal Journeys monthly you can go to each website here:

You can also see random pages on Pinterest

Stay Inspired!
 

FINDING BEAUTY IN THE DARK

The 2013 Magical Journal Journeys begin. I just finished my pages in Tammy's journal and will send it on it's journey to Stephanie. Tammy chose 3 colors, black, tan and white. I truly enjoyed this challenge of working mainly with just 3 colors. I have to admit getting started was also a challenge. Winter seems to be hanging around a little longer and the cloudy days and cold weather has made me a bit of  a couch clinger... I prefer that over "couch potato", but what heck..  Once I got started I think the dreary days actually inspired me as I looked outside and saw bits of Spring peeking out everywhere.

 


This is the first page I completed and also the first page in Tammy's journal. I cut the page shorter so that the wings would extend over onto the second page.

 This is the back of the first page. I did a lot of sewing on these pages which I love to do since it gives the pages added dimension and texture.

 The big flower is the second page and the "Finding Beauty" is a cardboard page that I worked on it separately and then sewed it onto the second page creating another page onto the second page. This makes the two pages look like a lot of pull out pages and makes more room for added artwork.

 This is the back of the added cardboard page and the other side of the second page to 
"Finding Beauty... in The Darkness".

Tammy make this cute pocket with blank cards for us to leave our mark and a note. 
I got carried away with mine when I was painting it and it ended up on my card board page!

 I made my own tag and added a note to the back of it.
Thank you Tammy for letting me "play" in your journal today.

  

So, my dreary days were actually inspirational, I never know where I am going to find it. Now, I am on my way to the Post Office in the morning and in a week or so, another journal will come to my door with a new color or color combo inspiration. 

Thank you for stopping in and I hope you will follow all our Journal Journeys, just click on the button on the side bar to view all the magic each month in 9 journals. You can also follow all our journal pages  on Pinterest.

  

STAY INSPIRED and FIND THE  BEAUTY

EVEN IN THE DARKNESS

XO