Journal Update

I shared about setting up my 2021 Journal in January.  Today I'm sharing some of the pages starting with a vision board.

My word of the year is Intentional.

I'm following along with Valerie Sjodin's Plan-with-me.  She uses the Dutch door for her word of the month but I am using it as the month divider.

Here's the calendar for February

 

 

And on to March.

And the March calendar.  As you can see this month's theme is butterflies.

I'm hoping that by the time we get to April's calendar there will actually be things to put in there.  I have tended to fill in the calendar at the end of each month which to be honest generally is a record of zoom calls!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Saturday Story

What do you think of when someone says they're a Drama student?  I don't know about now, but in the late 1960s people thought that drama students were wild, whacky and weird!  They danced on tables!  They just weren't the same as normal people!   They were thought to be exceptionally extrovert shall we say.

I was a Drama student.  Not at a drama school, but at a teacher training college where Drama was my main subject.  I wasn't extrovert and I didn't dance on tables.  I didn't much like acting but I did like the history of theatre, costume design and being the wardrobe mistress for the end of year play at the end of our 3rd year which acted as our exam.

In addition we could choose from a variety of things and I chose to make a full size costume.  I had to choose a character in a play and make the appropriate costume.  It also had to be modelled.  Here's my friend Kath (in 1970) wearing the costume I made for Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer.

I eventually got to see the play at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1985.

D is for Depression.  I'm not going to talk about it again today but you can find out more about my dealings with depression in theses posts: Time to Talk Day, One Little Word and Mental Health Awareness.

What other D words describe me? I'm a daughter and a daughter-in-law.  I like dogs not cats.  My favourite colour is Duck Egg Blue - which in America is inexplicably called Robin's Egg Blue.  I've taken classes by Dyan Reaveley and Dina Wakley.

What D words describe you?

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

A Sketchbook from scratch

In Simply Create I have been showing folks how to make their own 15cm square sketchbook.  I started with nine A4 sheets of cartridge paper from Hilary Beattie’s £10 paperpack.  I used 3 sheets of 100gsm, 3 sheets of 140gsm and 3 sheets of 220gsm paper.

I found some painted papers and various music papers and text papers. I began by ripping up bits of the papers and gluing them onto one side of the 100gsm paper. I used gel medium underneath and on top of each piece.

I trimmed these sheets down to cut the random edges off.

I painted all the sheets of paper, whatever gsm weight they were. On some I used a sponge and others I used a sponge roller. I used acrylic paints to colour my papers.  I randomly stencilled on all the papers.

I cut along the long edge of the paper to reduce the width to 15 cms.  When folded this would make a 15 centimetre square book.

I set aside 3 of the folded papers to be the outside of each signature.  I cut different sized pieces off one end of each of the other 6 pieces. Using double-sided tape, I attached one of the cut pieces to another of the painted papers. Because I had used the same colour scheme on every piece of paper the new pieces match in some way the original but disrupt the flow of the page.

I made covers by cutting 2 pieces of cardboard just slightly bigger than the closed folded pages. I painted a thin line round the edge of the cardboard on both sides.  I stitched the signatures together - there were 3 folded papers in each signature and then assembled the sketchbook with the covers.

I decided to use Florida as a theme for my sketchbook. I collected together bits of papers, photos etc to do with this theme. 

These pages have images from paper napkins.

The collage is made from the inside of an envelope, a piece of scrapbooking paper and a word. The writing from the previous page shows through. I drew dotted lines with a black pen on the white stencilled shape. And sketched round the paper napkin shells with a black pen. I used a white Posca pen to put the dots in the orange swirls.

I hope you have enjoyed how I put this sketchbook together.  Full details of step by step instructions on how to do this are available at Simply Create.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice