Having a yellow lab at my house made for an interesting weekend with 5 cats. The king of the house, Elmer, had his issues with the dog and hissed at her for the 1st 2 days. Her kitty tail was all puffed out and every move the dog made was being watched. Meanwhile the dog, Bebe, just looked at Elmer with this look that said “What?” LOL So here are pics of the 2 of them. Elmer is eating the dog food. So the dog food got moved into Bebe’s room. Usually Bebe is the aggressive eater but she couldn’t stop looking for Elmer to make sure it was safe to eat. Wonder what will happen next time we have weekend company………

Never a dull moment at my house – LOL!

In May of 2007 I took a class with artist, Kate Lemay, at the Creative Genius Gallery in Medford.  The class was about art journalling.   Kate showed me the many volumes of her art journals and how she wrote or drew something in them everyday.  Whatever she felt like putting down.  She let me pick this green journal entitled “Enjoy” from Compendium Incorporated.  There is an inspirational quote on the bottom left hand corner of the left side of the page.  It measures 4 3/4″ by 6″ and fits great in my purse.  I started to use my own art journal.  Not necessarily every day but when I had something in my head I would write it down.  Ideas for new projects, sketches of something I wanted to create or notes of things I had heard or seen and wanted to jot down.   I have always had more ideas than time and this was a great way for me to keep track of those ideas.  I was surprised to see how many of them I acutally completed and I would include some part of the finished creation in the book as well.     

(the book on the left is my 1st book – on the right my brand new “Create” book)

Eventually I started coming to the end of the book.  I found myself hesitating before opening the book.  Was this a worthy idea to use one of my last remaining pages?  Did I really want to write that down?  Perhaps that wasn’t an idea that I wanted for later.  I had gotten used to jotting things in my book and found that my thinking was changing as the clear pages disappeared.   What would I do without my book with me?  There was important info in there that I would look over when extra moments came along.  I had used every extra square inch and was even going back to find 1/2 filled or skipped pages.  This meant that I was chronologically out of order and that made it harder to go back and find things later.

So it was an important day when I decided to seek out the company that makes these books.   It was a moment of decision.  The time had come to start a new book.  You can see the difference between my year and half year old book and my brand new book with the smooth un-cracked binding. 

I am off and journalling again!  If you have never kept a book like this, try it!  It’s not like a diary but more a book of ideas.   It has helped me grow as a creative artist so that I can manage all the ideas rambling around in my head.  I have gotten so much more accomplished since I started to keep an art journal.  It became a place to gather my research and expound upon sketchy unfinished ideas until they actually became something.  It is a reference tool.  I keep it with me all the time cause you never know when inspiration will happen…