Art Journal

I started an art journal several months ago. It's a fun little book where I get to play with my supplies and document things that might not make it onto a scrapbook page. To streamline the process, I like to use either scraps from recent pages or leftover kit contents. The colors are already matched which is a great time saver. Playing with scraps, I'm also not as worried about using up something valuable that I might want or need later. Double bonus!

Remember that paper chain I used as a mask recently? It's found a place on a journal page, along with some scraps and stickers from Scraptastic's Great Adventures kit:

Do you have an art journal, smash book, or similar? What do you do with your scraps?

Photos from D. C.

These past few days I've been in Washington D. C., giving voice to those living in extreme poverty, families in a daily struggle for survival, children growing up malnourished with no hope of reaching their full potential, as well as those whose lives are impacted by preventable and treatable disease. 

Scrapbooking is what I do in my "spare" time. 

This is what I do in my more valuable time.

 

Here are some of the incredible people who presented at the ONE Summit, men and women who are making a positive impact on our world:

 Florence Ngobeni-Allen and Cristina Pena, spoke on behalf of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, where they are fighting for an HIV/AIDS-free generation of children. Florence lost her first child to the disease. She has since given birth to two healthy HIV-free children due to advancements in medicine preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Twenty-five years ago, Cristina, was one of only 20 children in the Los Angeles area diagnosed with the disease. She's still fighting the fight.

"The next famine will not be prevented by food aid" says Roger Thurow, hunger activist and author of Enough: Why the Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty and the soon to be released The Last Hunger Season. Smart, cost-effective investments in agricultural development are the key to preventing hunger, driving economic growth, and putting people as well as countries on the path to sustainability. Check out the trailer for the documentary that will accompany his book. Inspiring. We have 401Ks. They have 401Cows. Seriously!

"Poverty anywhere is an affront to people everywhere." After 20 years as a journalist in Africa, Gayle Smith is a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director at the National Security Council. She consults for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations.

South African Ambassador to the U. S., his Excellency Ebrahim Rasool inspired us all with his wisdom on advocacy. One of the greatest lessons from the apartheid movement-sing! Carry your burdens lightly!

Here are three of the more than 150 volunteer activists who were at the 2012 ONE Summit in D. C.

 Katie and I, fresh and optimistic, before our first meeting at Senator Landrieu's office.

 Cedric Richmond has some beautiful New Orleans flavored artwork in his office!

 LOVE this piece of art that greets you in the office of one of the Alabama Representatives.

Yes, as we were walking down the halls from one meeting to the next, my eyes were constantly drawn to the decor in the offices of the members of Congress. Some were like mini-museums!

A beautiful rotunda in one of the buildings.

  

 And I'll leave you with this...the gas prices in D. C.! Quite different from home. Thankfully, they have a very clean and efficient metro system!

Please get involved. Go to ONE.org and lend your voice for those living in extreme poverty.

Paper Chain Mask

Several weeks ago I happened upon an adorable paper chain pattern, which I sketched out immediately and set aside for a future project. I thought of it again when I began to work on this layout with the photos of kids running up and down the yard. It seemed a good fit, and I ended up using it to create an interesting title block for my page. I folded a strip of paper to fit the pattern and carefully cut around the silhouette. Instead of using the chain itself on the page, I stretched it out and used it as a mask, adhering it to the paper with repositional adhesive. Then I got out my ink pad and blending tool. Tim Holtz Barn Door Distress Ink matched the colors in the Scraptastic Great Adventures kit perfectly. After blending the ink onto the mask and into the background, I added some paint splatters in yellow and blue. Only after the paint had dried did I carefully peel off the mask, setting it aside. (You'll see in a future post how I put it to use as well.)

I had a lot of scraps hanging around my workspace from this page and the three I'd already completed with the kit, so I gathered them up, cut several flag shapes from three of the patterns, and arranged them sideways on the page, leaving just enough room for journaling.

In this closeup picture of the title block, you might be able to see my letter treatment. In order to help the white letters stand out, I used a Slick Writer to add dashes on each of the letters before outlining them, tracing the letter shapes as close as possible using a regular black journaling pen. Much easier to read now.

Since I'm big at layering, using an average of 6-7 patterned papers (pieces of patterned papers) on a page, there wasn't much left of my kit after completing this layout. However, I did manage to do one more thing, which I will share shortly!

Silly Sightseeing

While working on Diddle, Diddle Dumpling, the page featured in yesterday's blog post, I kept noticing all sorts of arrows and pointing fingers in this Echo Park collection, Note to Self. Arrow paper, arrow border, arrow stickers! I knew right then what photos were next in line to scrap.

Just before his senior year in high school, Chris participated in a 10 day service project in Mexico. They spent their time making life a little easier for the very poor residents of the central Yucatan peninsula. One project was to re-thatch the roofs of villagers. I wished for at least a few photos of the high school boys' service, but I suppose it wasn't the time to take pics when they were working. Instead, the camera came back with a bunch of silly photos from their free day...swimming in a cenote (gorgeous underground swimming hole), exploring Tulum, and acting silly among the ruins. At least Chris handed off the camera so that he was in some of the pics, even if they were silly ones. :)

Diddle Diddle Dumpling

I've recently added Echo Park to my list of favorite paper companies. Their full collection packs come with such an amazing array of stickers, letter stickers, borders, journaling spots, etc. And then there's the paper. The viewmaster reel pattern has to be my favorite from the Note To Self set. So cool! I cut two of them from the sheet and used them to ground a couple of embellishment clusters on the following page:

When I found my son sound asleep on the stairs, one sock off and one sock on, I immediately thought of the nursery rhyme, Diddle Diddle Dumpling. In the rhyme, he "went to bed with his stockings on, one shoe off and one shoe on. Of course what happened here is a bit of a variation of the original child's poem, but I thought it would be a cute title for my page.

This was something I wanted to remember in a fun way. Diddle Diddle Dumpling!

A Strip Scrap Strategy

Whenever I want to do some fast scrapping, I turn to sketches and challenges to jumpstart my creativity. This time I viewed a Glitter Girl Adventure video, Three Scrap Strategies, and was inspired to create the following page.

I have had the Emerson quote paper for quite some time and the story behind the photo made it quite appropriate for my project. The orangutan in my photo, Berani, is a resourceful little fellow, who had once escaped his enclosure, using a rope and T-shirt to swing out over the moat and fencing. He took that quote to heart, but his keepers didn't appreciate his wanderlust and brought him back to the orangutan exhibit.

Also with my "camping" papers, I found orange, brown and green scraps to compliment my photo. Again, most of these had been in my stash for quite some time. In fact, the only recently acquired product on this page are the bingo cards, cut from a recent Simple Stories collection. As much as I like new supplies, it feels good to use up stuff from the stash! I might have to apply this particular scrap strategy again.

Jazz Fest Memory

Lately, I've been pulling out photos to scrap that are less than perfect. You know the ones. With a memory or story behind them, you print them, but then you are less inspired to scrap them. I have an envelope of these, some from 8 years back. The photo I took this particular day at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was a blurry one, but there was a story there, a story that I had written down in my blog...way back in 2007. I was able to go back into my blog archives, find what I'd written, edit it for my page, and print it out. What could be easier!?

And what could go better with this picture than the papers from Echo Park's This & That Charming collection? They were perfect. They even had a paper with various tickets and receipts, one of which was a "raincheck"...so appropriate for my story.

The Jazz Fest 2012 schedule has come out, and I'm already trying to decide which day to go. Should I see the Eagles, the Beach Boys, the Foo Fighters, the Neville Brothers or Glen Hansard? Most of course are on different days or conflicting times! It figures.