Blog Inspiration

I wasn't going to post today (thought I had nothing to write), but I got a bit of inspiration from a couple of blogs that I visit regularly.

First, I visited Nance; in her post for yesterday, she showed a piece of her art work with a quote about patience. This made me think, because I haven't been having much patience lately, least of all with myself. I've been having some back pain, and I've been impatient to find out what's going on with that. Now I'm impatient for the therapy to start working, and I've only had one therapy session so far (insert sheepish grin here)! Also, I've been impatient with myself to get important projects done, not wanting to give myself time to think and play, and if I do stop to think and play, then I feel guilty! Well, I know better than that, I just needed to be reminded! Thanks for the internet butt-kick, Nance! ;)

Next, I visited Kira; her post today was about choosing an art journal, describing the different types of journals, papers inside, etc. I agree with her, heavier papers are easier to work on with a variety of media. (I hate excessive paper warping!) My two "gathering" journals (one for art/craft ideas, one for inspiring images) are both 9" x 11", spiral-bound. The idea one has medium-weight pages that are blank on half, with writing lines on the other half. The inspiration journal has very heavy pages, which is great when I decide to remove something - I can just peel it off and cover the place with something else! My art journal is spiral-bound, 5 1/4" x 8 1/2", with strange, thin pages. I had it lying around, and thought the pages were too thin, so I'm painting both sides of the pages with acrylics before decorating (I have a description of this process in a previous post, you can find it here). The colorful backgrounds shown here are waiting to be decorated. :)

Artful Blogging Party

I was very late to ArtsyMama's Artful Blogging Party, but I went anyway, I viewed a ton of artful blogs with great tutorials and other interesting information! (Since I was late, I didn't get to post a tutorial for the party, but my earlier post below has my non-tutorial for making acrylic paint backgrounds, if you'd like to look.) If you didn't get to the party, or you'd like to go back and check out some of the links again, here is the permanent link to the party page:

Needle Felting

Have you tried needle felting yet? The silly-looking bear and the heart on the right are both needle felted.

Described simply, needle felting is stabbing through fibers repeatedly with a barbed needle. Doing this causes the fibers to hook together to create a fabric of sorts.

Wool roving or felt pieces can be needle felted on knitted garments, felt, fleece or other fabrics. Fashion items like hats, purses, sweaters and scarves can be decorated with needle felting. Clever artists needle felt imaginative dimensional pieces such as dolls, toys, ornaments and jewelry.
To find out more, check out these links: The Silver Penny and Craftlog have how-to's, Clover has some great needle felting tools, National Nonwovens has luscious colors of wool felts and Wool Wisps (roving) for needle felting, C & T Publishing has needle felting books.

Great Art Journal Links

Journal page with wrapping paper flowers and punched cardstock flowers over acrylic background. It was fun to keep going and totally fill up the page!

My favorite art journal link is Aisling's Artists Journals. This site has everything you want to know about journals - basics, ideas and tips on creating and keeping your own artist journal.

Another good one is Illuminations -this site has good ideas for using illustrations and pictures to help our journaling and to gain insights into ourselves.

Here, Teesha Moore has tons of her journal pages to look at, plus you can click the link to an article about her journaling techniques and products used. I could look for hours and hours at all her pages!

Enjoy!