Journaling Workshop Wrap-Up...

Well, I finally got my last two pages done for my journaling workshop, while I was in Michigan at Heather's the last few days.  I got soooooo much done while I was there...like...47 cards and 2 scrapbook pages...plus shopping, wine drinking, chocolate eating, and sleeping in...woot!  Anyway, here's my last homework assignments (cards to be posted later!):

Journaling in a Venn Diagram (yep...a Venn Diagram)
It would never occur to me journal in a Venn Diagram, and I had a hard time thinking of a topic right off, but once I got it figured out, it really turned out well.  I'm sort of stretching myself to come up with some of the pages for these prompts right now, but I know having them in my stash of ideas will be helpful down the road as well...there's always unique pages that call for unique add-ons.  This one is of the pups (click to enlarge), and shows how much better adjusted they are now that they have each other :)

Journaling in a Spreadsheet
Another one that really hurt my noggin' to come up with a page for, but I like the result, and I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for the future when I have a lot of information to cover.  Particularly if I ever have kids...I think it'd be perfect for that.  For now, it's of me, my Mom, and my sister (click to enlarge).

And that concludes my Grammar Free Journaling Workshoph with Angie Lucas on Big Picture Classes.  I had a lot of fun, and I'm sort of sad that it's over, but I'm glad I learned so much!

Playing Catch Up...

So, I've gotten kinda behind on my journaling homework.  Luckily, I had some time tonight and got pretty close to caught up...only 2 more pages to go.  Here's what I was working on tonight:

Journaling in a Graph
So I miss my friend Chris...we used to go out and karaoke constantly back when I lived in DeKalb.  Long story short, being a grown-up sucks sometimes, and life just gets in the way of getting together...particularly when I work retail and she's a night nurse...talk about making it impossible to mesh schedules!  Anyway, I've been thinking about her a lot lately, so I made this page to honor our karaoke duets and how much we rock the house :)  lol.  Also, it was apparently a washi tape kind of day...I'm obsessed!  (Click picture for a closer view.)

Journaling in a Pie Chart
It would've never occurred to me to journal in a pie chart, although once I got going, I thought of a bunch of other ways to use them.  This graphic representations are sort of nice when you don't have many pictures...they take up a lot of space, but still have a lot of visual interest.  I did a pie chart of the breakdown of my recent vacations with Mom.  It might have taken all of my childhood and part of my adult life, but I finally convinced her that being so busy sightseeing that you need a vacation from your vacation sort of defeats the purpose of going in the first place.  Now, we just relax and soak it in! Aaaand...more washi tape!  (Click picture for a closer view.)

Journaling - Group Quiz Prompt
This was actually the workshop wrap-up (yes, I'm working out of order, but that's because my printer was being stubborn and didn't want to print out my spreadsheet or venn diagram...so look forward to that on my next post!  lol).  I think I've probably scrapped pictures of MYSELF more in this workshop than in the rest of my scrapbooking combined.  And I think I might actually like that.  Weird.  Either way, it'll be nice to have a little snapshot of myself to look back on a few years from now.  (Click picture for a closer view.)

Well, that's all for tonight.  Hopefully, I'll get my last two pages done tomorrow night, but I still have a bunch of stuff to cut on my Cameo for my Easter cards, and I have to work on packing for Michigan...just 3 days till it's wine time at Heather's house!!!  :)

Painless Poetry and Checklist Journaling...

Man, am I feeling accomplished tonight!  Okay, so I was SUPPOSED to be working on St. Patrick's Day cards, BUT I finally had a brainstorm about what to do for my last week's journaling assignments!  So I got that done AND my Project Life update...woot!

The first assignment was Painless Poetry journaling...and I'll admit, I was scared.  It was all stream-of-consciousness writing and highlighting parts you like, etc. etc.  As someone who is lucky if she adds journaling at all (or at least historically, that's been true), I didn't know what I could possibly write that much about.  To top it off, I added the pressure on myself that if I'm going to write that much, it should be MEANINGFUL.  Well, as soon as I took the pressure off and nixed that idea entirely, the words came pouring out!  I just picked a pretty picture from our New England trip this past summer, and went to town.  This one is about how I've become a bit of a "foodie" in the last few years.  I did all the journaling on Microsoft Word, and then changed the size/font color to highlight the parts that I liked.  The rest all fades into the background, but you still get the impression of there being more there (You can see it a little better if you click to enlarge it).  Then I traced over the design in the bottom right corner (yeah, don't give me that much credit...I didn't draw it myself...lol), and added some doodling and a title with a white marker, and voila!  I like it...it looks diner chalkboard-y :)

The second assignment was journaling in a Checklist (specifically, a comparative checklist).  I decided to go with the New England theme (cuz I'm crazy, and I needed the two pages to match...lol).  It actually did work out pretty well though, because I'm always so surprised at how highly regional things are, and how much you don't notice it until someone three states away is looking at you like you just grew a second head.  lol. 

And here's a close-up of the journaling, cuz I wasn't sure how easy it would be to see otherwise (you'll probably STILL have to click on it to actually be able to read it...sorry!)

And that's all for tonight, peeps :)  Hopefully I'll be getting a recipe update for the past month's cooking and a new menu plan up soon too...we'll see how ambitious I'm feeling and whether or not we get that snowstorm they're talking about...again...argh!  Have a good one!

Single Word Journaling...

Another homework assignment!  I'm actually caught up on my journaling class BEFORE the next assignment posts (in a few hours...but still...caught up!).  One of the things this class talks about is doing pages with the STORY first instead of pictures first.  Point being, there are lots of things that probably wouldn't make it into the scrapbook if you were scrapping only from pictures.  If you think of stories that you want to include, then you can go looking for a picture that reminds you of the story, or somehow relates to it, AFTER you journal...or maybe even do a page without pictures.  Anyway, since I'm coming up on another fabulous scrapping weekend at Heather's, it seemed appropriate to do a page for weekends past.  We always have a good time, but there's not always specific scrap-able events, plus we're awful about taking pictures when we get together.  Sooooo...I just wrote up some words that made me think of those weekends and yanked a picture from Facebook (with permission, of course), and here we are...a cute page to commemorate scrapping and bitching and drinking too much wine...woot!  (P.S.  I'm obsessed with the camera template I misted/inked into the background...ah-ma-zing).  Plus, in the name of my OCD-ishness, it's a little matchy-matchy with yesterday's page in the colors and the friend theme, so it makes a complete layout for my homework album :)  Happiness is a place for everything and everything in it's place...lol! 

Anyway, that's all for tonight.  T-minus 20 days till I'm in Michigan...woot!  G'night all :)

Journaling With Numbers...

Well, part of this week's journaling homework was journaling with numbers.  I've gotta say, this workshop is giving me tons of ideas to scrap old pictures I've had laying around for years...pictures that I've always liked, but never found a place for, because they didn't really go with anything else.  Anyway, so I've had this pic of my friend Ryan for ages (probably almost as long as I've known him), and when I was flipping through my box of pictures, I just knew it was the picture for this assignment.  Weirdly, while I'm a numbers-oriented person as far as math/statistics go, I had a really hard time reconciling that with my crafty side for this project.  I think maybe I need to put more stock in that whole left-brain/right-brain dominance thing.  I must've went through a dozen scenarios with different numbers, and they just didn't seem to relate to each other enough, or seem important enough to go on the page...I finally settled on a less-is-more approach, and I think it turned out pretty good.  I added another handlettered title and a doodled band/border for my doodling workshop.  I'm sort of obsessed with the doodled band...I'm going to be doing that one on everything for a while, I think ;)   Here's the end result:

Also in this journaling workshop, our teacher keeps talking about a favorite pics album that she keeps.  I'm thinking that's a brilliant idea.  Pictures that aren't necessarily in chronological order...or that don't go with any particular theme, location, date, etc...just pictures that you like, and you want to keep in one place to enjoy.  I think that's sort of what my "homework scrapbook" is going to turn out to be, because I've just been gathering up pictures that I like that have been homeless thusfar.  Anyway, I best be getting to bed...more homework tomorrow unless I'm totally slacking!  :)

Journaling Homework...

Well, thanks to a snowstorm that got my store closed early, I had extra time to scrap tonight and work on my homework for my journaling class.  Woot!  Hooray for snow days!  (Note: I probably won't be feeling that way when I'm digging my car out in the morning, but alas...I'll enjoy it for the moment.)  Anyway, this first one was for journaling in the style of a quiz.  I had the hardest time thinking of what to do.  I finally wound up writing the quiz first after stumbling across a "Would You Rather..." reference on TV the other day.  I took a few applicable questions (that weren't too ridiculous or inappropriate...as that game is prone to being), and then dug through my bin of random pictures and found a picture of myself from a couple of years ago at a work meeting (yes...I'm wearing a tiara and wand at a work meeting...I work at a scrapbook store people...it happens...lol).  I'm still doing my doodling/lettering for my handlettering class too, so that's featured again.  I think it turned out pretty darn cute...I don't even hate the picture of myself (which is weird, cuz I NEVER scrapbook myself). 

And then the other assignment was journaling in a single sentence.  I've had these pics hanging out on my computer for a couple of years of my sister and I from a trip to St. Louis.  I never had much in particular to do with them (besides post them on Facebook, obviously), because they didn't tell much of a story...except that we're dorks and spend too much time taking pictures of ourselves making ridiculous faces at the camera when we're bored in a hotel room.  lol :)  Anyway, I'm liking it, I think...even if that does mean I'm featured on TWO whole scrapbook pages in recent history...weird!  I'm particularly obsessed with the little Maya Road houses on the bottom...I colored them with some Slick Writers and I'm in love with them!

So that's it for the craftiness tonight.  In other news, I'm a sucker, and when I got an email this morning, reminding me it's the last day to sign up for the Technicolor Doodling workshop on Creative Passions Classes, I clicked right on through and signed up.  Argh.  I promised myself I wouldn't sign up for another one till I was done with the first two!  Whoops :) 

Journaling Workshop - List Style...

Another combined homework assignment!  In this one, I combined the list-style journaling assignment from my Grammar Free Journaling workshop (on Big Picture Classes) and the embellished title assignment from my Hand Lettering workshop (on Creative Passion Classes).  I wanted to make yesterday's page into a full layout with all the pups, so I did a page with Daisy May, the newest addition to the family.  Her name was a helpful inspiration for the embellished title.  Aside from that, I did it in a similar style with doodling so layout all feels like it goes together.  The paper is Studio Calico Snippets.  I gotta say, these doodling pages are a lot cheaper to do than my other pages...lol :)  Anyway, that's all for tonight.  Catching up on Project Life tomorrow, and maybe submitting a card for a challenge on the House Mouse blog!  Woot!  Yay crafty-time!

Inspiration Strikes...

I'm bringing craftiness back to the blog!  Obviously, I've been doing random crafty stuff since I last posted anything on here about it.  However, it's been a bit of a struggle for a while.  I hadnt had motivation to scrapbook in ages and I'd even lost momentum on my stamping projects (on the actual stamping...not on the buying of stamps...lol).  The good news is, since I moved to Iowa, I've been getting more involved in scrapbooking and crafting again.  My friend Heather inspired me to actually start my Project Life scrapbook (for real this time), and I've actually been doing a good job of keeping up.  I went and took a workshop about doodling at Memory Bound (another local scrapbooking store), and had so much fun.  And now, thanks to Teresa (one of the gals at work), I'm getting involved in some online classes too.  Right now, I've got a handlettering workshop and a journaling workshop that I'm participating in.  Because I've got all that, plus St. Patrick's Day cards that I'm working on, I decided to combine a couple of my assignments this week.  This page has a handlettered title for my handlettering workshop, and it has comparative lists for my journaling workshop (plus doodling, because I'm a little obsessed since I took that class a couple weeks ago).  I'm pretty happy about how it turned out :)

Anyway, that's all for tonight.  I'm excited that I'm getting motivated and inspired again, so you can expect to see more soon!