I Meant To Say...And I Fixed It"

I'm so super excited about my page for this week's Journal 52 prompt!  (You can read more about J52 HERE.)  The prompt was 'Love Letters', and I think I diverged from my routine a little bit on this one, and I REALLY like the result so much:

"You are all the words I meant to say but couldn't scribble them down before they slipped away."

In the beginning I struggled a little with what I wanted to put on the page...and then it hit me.  One of my goals for this year is to work on my hand lettering...and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to practice...I mean, love letters...c'mon!

Because I am not the best with lettering, I used a piece of manila card stock to write out my quote (which is from a poem I wrote that can be found HERE if you want to read the whole thing).  It came out just right the first time!  ...I couldn't believe it either...  I wanted to make the paper look aged and like it had been read over and over...I got a little out of control with the Vintage Photo Distress Stain though, so the whole page is now brown...but that's ok, you can still read it!  I crumpled it up (after deliberating for a long time, because the writing was pretty good...for my skill level...but if you can make it once you can make it again, right?) and then used stamp pads to hit the high spots and make them stand out more.

Then on the watercolor paper (I've been using this as a base for all my J52 pages so far...and a lot of my other pages too...), I decided to pull out my Dylusions and used Vibrant Turquoise and White Linen colors mixed together.  An interesting thing happened...a happy accident, really.  I had sprayed the Turquoise first in a few spots and was going to spray the white into it right away, but had to go take the dog out (he insisted) and when I came back to the page, the turquoise had dried a lot.  But I figured they were water-soluble so they should still work, right?  And I sprayed the white over top.  What happened was these really cool areas where the turquoise sunk into the page and turned this grungy weird color...  I was a little disappointed at first, so I tried to cover it with more turquoise and white mixed and then dripped water in a few places...and it ended up being really cool and vintage looking.  I could never have figured that out if I was trying to do it on purpose!

When that dried, I stamped  all over the page using brown Stayzon ink and a stamp from Hero Arts called "La Letter"...and it was looking good!  Then I thought, what if I try to make it look older with some stamp pads (I mean, the ink box was already open...I HAD to!), and this time it happened like I wanted...(note to self: use stamp pads, not distress stain, for aging purposes).  

Then I wondered if I could make coffee cup stains on the page.  First I used Neocolor II's and they didn't give the effect I wanted...I almost thought I had ruined the page...so then I tried using brown India ink, drawing circles with a pipette to do it.  That was more of the look I was going for.  It didn't end up exactly how I wanted it to, but it has me going in the right direction, and with a little more practice, I think I can eventually get a really cool coffee cup stain.  But, even though it doesn't look like a coffee cup stain to me, it does look pretty cool!  When everything was dry, I took foam tape and stacked some pieces on top of each other in different thicknesses to attach the writing page to the background page.  I wanted it to look like somebody had just laid the note down and was coming back for it any minute...and it totally looks like that to me!!!  (Can you tell I'm excited by this page?)

Also, related to J52, I used a suggestion by my friend Pamikins to make some changes to one of last week's pages for the 'Abstract' prompt (it's SO much better now!):

"completely without meaning"
Thanks to Pamikins for the suggestion of adding words to the 'middle school art project page'...I also added thicker black lines, and I like this page WAY better now than I did before...It's still out of my comfort zone, but with the darker lines and the words, I no longer hate it!  I kind of like it more and more every time I look at it.  Thanks, Pamikins! <3

And then, related to suggestions for page fixing, I used a suggestion by my friend Patricia to change this page from last week's Documented Life spread...it was a little thing, but it makes a big difference to me:

Thanks to Patricia for the suggestion of adding something to the middle of the flower...I couldn't think of anything else, so I just did splatters with white and green india inks.  That small change made a BIG difference to me...It looks finished to me now, and I think that's what I was looking for.  Thanks, Patricia! <3

And then, I got some fabulous mail art from my friend, Cheryl, (Thank you, my Cheryl!!!) that I kept forgetting to photograph!  I finally remembered and here she is:

"What is true beauty?"
I got a surprise card from my sweet friend Cheryl with one of her gorgeous faces on it!  I love her so much (both Cheryl and the face she sent)!!!  I like how she just colors in parts and leaves white space...it makes me so happy.  And I love this gal's lips!

I am so happy with my J52 page for this week.  Out of my usual, ended up accidentally learning a few cool things, and got to practice my letter skills!  I always talk about how much my handwriting looks like a 12 year old boy's...and I notice a lot of other people aren't fans of theirs either!  What about you?  Do you like your handwriting?  Do you think you can have bad handwriting skills, but be good at hand lettering?  (I hope you can...or else my dreams will be shattered! haha)

Journal 52, Week 4 - Building Character

First, I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to leave such sweet and heartfelt comments on the last post.  I remind myself over and over that when something is hard to talk about, that's the thing I need to say the most.  You reward me with your kind words and lift up my spirits.  Thank you all so much. <3

Today, I just want to share my Journal 52 page for this week.  You can read more about J52 HERE.  The prompt this time was to create your own character for your art journal, and here's what I made:

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.  The shadow is what we think of it, the tree is the real thing."
-Abraham Lincoln

I have to admit that after having such a bad time this past week, I was initially just going to draw horns on my girl and say something to the effect of "being the hero of your own story might make you come across as the villain in someone else's"...but I thought better of it.

For a while now, I've been dealing with a frustrating situation at my job.  For the most part, I can handle it and not lose my temper, but with being stressed out and emotional over Nu Nu...well, you can only deal with so much before you start to crack...I feel like I'm at my breaking point.

I have a co-worker...or I should say a person who sits in the same office as I do all day long without doing much actual work...and I hate her.  My other co-workers also have...let's say...very low opinions of her.  I do my best to keep quiet at work about how I feel about this woman, but not everyone else tries to practice "if you don't have anything nice to say..."  I try to maintain a professional attitude, one, because I was raised that way, and two, because if I do say something off hand, I will be the person that gets caught and probably fired over it.  I might have a big butt, but I always keep it covered...

I'm sure everybody either works with someone like her or did at one point.  The person who does the least work, that complains the most about how hard they work...  The person who makes the most money, but complains to the others about how much she 'struggles' to make ends meet...  The person who always tries to one-up everyone else...if you broke your arm, she knows someone who had both their arms bitten off by a shark...  The person to whom you just want to say "I'm sorry, did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?"   All these great things and more are wrapped up into one evil succubus at my job.

And since I'm ranting, she lies...she lies about things that don't matter.  She lies to garner attention.  And the worst part of all is she doesn't do it well.  I personally am a fantastic liar...my own mother can't tell when I'm lying.  I try not to lie, I'm not proud of the fact that I'm so good at such a bad thing, but for Pete's sake, if you're going to do something, do it right!  And the second to worst part of all is that she believes her own lies.  The woman is completely delusional.

The really frustrating part for me is that, at first, everyone loves her.  "Oh, she's so sweet..."  Gag.  The only good part about it is that eventually, people see through her act...  My father was like this to a tee...I think it's a big part of the reason I really can't stand my co-worker.  Just because you know someone is going to get their just desserts eventually, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to deal with at the time...

And I was thinking about this when I started to make my character page this week.  How my co-worker has the reputation of being a nice, sweet old lady but the reality of it is she's a lazy, racist jerk of an old woman... Shadow vs. Tree.  People eventually see it, but it takes them a while sometimes.

The original journaling, which sound pretty negative, actually describes the situation really well.  In my story, I'm the hero, of course (I mean, it is my story...come on!), having to silently combat this frustrating situation day after day, without a resolution in sight.  

On the other hand, this woman is the hero in her mind...which makes me her villain.  In her mind, she works hard and struggles to make ends meet and she wants attention and praise and sympathy and pity.  By being the way she is, she doesn't get the things she wants...she constantly fishes for it and if people do give her the reaction she's hoping for, it's only because she's backed them into the corner about it.  I really did try to pity her for a long time, because she's constantly defeating her own purposes.  If she could just be a decent person, she'd get all the things she wants...or else, she wouldn't want them anymore.  But she's not a decent person, so much so that I've quit trying to pity her, and am reduced to trying not to throw a computer monitor at her face...anymore, that's all the energy I can muster in this fight.

The extra funny thing about it is that, as her villain, I'm getting all the things she wants.  For the most part, my co-workers like me, they joke with me, they offer to help me without being asked...because they know I do the same for them.  I get commended because of my good work by my boss...because instead of talking about how much I do, I just do it!  I totally understand that as an employee, I'm not doing anyone any favors.  They PAY me to do my job.  I also understand that no one is irreplaceable.  I work hard because I need a job, and it's part of the deal...I work, they give me money to buy art supplies (and, to a lesser extent, food)...  I am not there to get praised, I'm there to make money, but I get praised because I actually do work.  No matter what it is, work wise or socially (or artistically even), I do the best that I can...that's the most anyone can do.  If you want to see the least anyone can do, I invite you to come meet my evil co-worker...

I didn't mean to have such a rant today about this.  I really do try not to talk bad about other people...I don't always succeed as much as I'd like, but I do TRY!  I just had to get it out, before steam started shooting from my ears, making steam engine whistle sounds like in the cartoons...  

What do you do to deal with the 'villain' in your story?  Do you think someone looks at you like you're the bad guy in their story?  Are you the bad guy in someone's story (you naughty monkey!)?

Panned out a little so you can see the edges of the page...the first layer of this page was various book pages, including a word search...you can see on the left hand side that "journal" was one of the words in the word search...I was very excited by that, and had to leave it showing...  There, now I feel like that was a more positive way to end a post... :)

Documented Life Week 3

Despite catching a case of the creeping crud from my husband, I'm still doing good on all my creative commitments...so YAY and Snoopy-style happy dance!  

Today I've got this week's Documented Life spread to share with you.  (You can read more about DL and join in the *free* fun HERE.)  The challenge this week was to use an envelope from your mailbox on your spread in some way.  It occurred to me that I had just used all those Sweet Red Clovers from my care packages last week...and that made me feel like I was secretly ahead of the game...or a trend setter...I'm not sure which...but either way, I told myself "Calm down, big head!" and figure out a different way to use the envelopes this time.  Here's what happened:

Documented Life, Week 3

I used Distress Stains in Tarnished Brass and Victorian Velvet for the page backgrounds.  My envelopes are the middle piece of paper on the left page and the three tiny envelopes from my Anna Banana  (two on the left, one on the right).

Left page close up.  You can see the envelope piece in the middle (the paper that says "Very well, then I contradict myself.")  That envelope and the large paper on the bottom (that was the front of a very sweet thank you card) both came from a friend I met through the KIOS blog-a-thon.  On top of the card front you can see two of the three tiny envelopes made by my friend Anna and sent to me in a care package!

The words on the paper are all lines from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, which you can read HERE in it's lengthy entirety.  I've liked that poem, or specific parts of it at least, since I first read it.  Some people think it's a very egotistical poem, and I can see that viewpoint, but I don't feel that it is...it seems like it is more of a poem about acceptance and empathy to me.  That's how I read it anyway.  

I jumped around the poem and just picked some of the bits I liked and wrote them down in no particular order.

On this page, starting in the top left, it reads "I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, (and under the card, which flips up it says) I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

Then on the papers and inside the envelopes, it says "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. (and the quote continues on the next page) I contain multitudes."

The right page close up.  This girl was one I had drawn (but not colored) for 29 Faces...she was my ode to Mucha, who's work I love...  I think I liked her better not colorized, but oh well, she's still pretty either way...and I have a picture of her in uncolored form to remember her by, so it's ok.  I'm happy she's finally in a journal and not floating around my desk anymore.  Also, the background page for this was a piece of scrapbook paper that I added to make enough spreads for 52 weeks...and look at the bottom middle, there's an envelope!  I didn't draw that stuff, and this was just the next page in the DL journal, so I thought it was a funny coincidence that letters were the challenge and I already had a letter on the page!  Crazy!

The Whitman quotes on this page say "no two alike and every one good" (which is just a little phrase/snippet that I really liked) and the last line of the poem, which has always grabbed my attention: "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you."

The line "I contain multitudes" is what inspired me to use Whitman quotes on this spread...because I was thinking of all the lovely care packages I've received since starting art journaling...every time I get an envelope, it contains multitudes of creativity, love, and inspiration AND lots of fun stuff for me to get to play with!  I am so grateful to all my artistic friends for the wonderful things they do for me, mentally/emotionally and physically!  You all are fabulous and I smooch your faces (after I'm not contagious...or from afar)! <3

And on that note, I'm off to take some NyQuil and sleep my cold away...

Journal 52 Week 1

I finally finished my first Journal 52 (J52 for short) spread!  You can read more about J52 HERE.  Last week, I appropriately dubbed 2014 so far to be the 'Year of Challenges'...I think it's a given...but so far, I've kept up with all of my self-imposed commitments.  So goody, goody gumdrops! 

When I remember, I try to take pictures of my pages in various degrees of completion...it actually helps to improve the page, I swear!  It can look great to me with the naked eye, but I take a picture and I can suddenly see that something's a little wonky...and then I can fix it before I move on to the next stage.  I'm sure there's some science-y explanation for this, but I don't know what it is, and mostly, I just care that it works for me...  

Here's my J52 Week 1 spread for the prompt "Up, Up, and Away" (side note: I hope all of the J52 prompts are as interesting to me as this one was!): 

Here it is in the rough sketch stage.  I used a circle template for all the balloons, which felt like a stroke of genius to me...you have no idea how misshapen those poor balloons would have been otherwise!  I messed up on her left hand, and since I used colored pencil, no erasing could occur...but it's ok, I fixed it eventually!

Here is the beginning shading page.  I'm still working on my colored pencil shading skills...more Prismacolors, please!  Thanks to this picture, I noticed how wonky her eyes were...in real life, it didn't seem that bad, but when I took the picture....WHAM!  Those eyes were REALLY off...

(Sorry for the blurriness!)  More colored pencil happening now...also Aquamarkers were added for the balloons and in the hair and dress...and Distress Stain in Tumbled Glass was used for the sky  color of the background...I like how the Distress Stain came out a little patchy...it made it look like a more realistic sky to me.  See how much better the eyes are now?  Still not perfect, but WAY less weird looking!

TA-DA!  Here's the finished page...YAY!  Added some shading on the balloons with a water-soluble pen   Side note: I use Artist Loft (Michael's store brand) Illustration Pens as my water-soluble pens...they claim to be 'water resistant', but they resist ZERO water...not even a little...which I was really disappointed about when I first got them...then I realized I could just go with it and make that work for me...and with a coupon, they were way cheaper than buying on purpose water-soluble pens.  Win/win situation!  Some more shading on the girl done with Aquamarkers.  Highlights on the balloons and the girl with white pen.  And a few touches of Micron to the girl's eyes.  Also look at the hand...it's much better now!  I added some journaling in the strings of the balloons...not much, just the title "Up, Up, and Away", the date, and my signature.

I'm S-U-P-E-R (say it cheerleader style haha) excited with the way this page turned out!  One thing I wish I would have done differently is to make the stings between the balloons and the girls hands be taut instead of all loosey goosey...I mean, physics...come on...  But I guess the idea of balloons being able to carry a girl away is enough of a stretch that I can forgive myself some magical balloon strings that don't follow the laws of nature...

One of the things I really liked about J52 was the lady's suggestion of using a 3 ring binder as your art journal...hence the holes punched in the page.  The reason I'm excited is that I want to make some heavily textured/3-D pages, but I never do, because it's hard (aka too much of a hassle for me personally) to work in the rest of your journal after you put a good and bumpy one in the mix.  Now I can just work on loose watercolor paper with holes punched in it and make the page as thick and juicy as a person could ever want it to be!  I'm kind of excited about that...oh, the possibilities....

Now I've just got to get to work on making my binder pretty...

Jane Girls

October was a bit of a bust for me, I must admit...  My creativity flew out the window to some warmer climate...my procrastinating parts over-took me...there were several downright frowny face days...days I just felt BLAH for no reason...or for no reason I want to fess up to...  Gross.

But now October is over, and I don't particularly want to spend November on the same path.  I therefore turn my back on this year's October and all it's crappy ways, and I won't dwell on it anymore.  So long stupid jerk-tober!

There are a few exceptions to the majority crapfest that was October for me.  I did get a little bit of art done, despite my muse's vacation.  I already shared some of it...not my usual style, that collage...so I guess somebody else's muse must have been visiting me that day.  But I do like it.

I am also almost done with my reciprocation care package for my friend Anna.  I won't share it until I am sure she's gotten it, but it won't be long now...just icing the cake at this point...

And one of the really good things that happened in October was that Cloth Paper Scissors had a sale on a lot of their online classes...and I got two.  I got one of Joanne Sharpe's Artful Lettering, which I need to look at more in depth so I can apply it...however, I really liked one of the ideas on the video and used it in the spread below.  And, the other one I got is Jane Davenport's The Whimsical Face, which made me super happy.  I really like Jane's style of faces, and this video is such a nice intro to faces in her style.  Whether you're not comfortable drawing faces yet, or you just want to try a different style of face (like me), this video is AWESOME!  Full disclosure, I got the videos for $5 each (because of the super sale), and I feel like this video would have been worth it even at full price.  Although, at full price, which is $30, I wouldn't have gotten it, because I am on spending lock-down, so I would never have known how awesome it is...but it's definitely nice to have in the arsenal of craftiness now that I do!  

This is my 3/4 face that I did along with the video:

...I think this girl is wearing a scrunchie...don't judge her too harshly...

I really appreciated Jane's instruction on how to achieve a decent looking 3/4 face...she made it really easy to understand and accomplish!  I find this gal's ear to be a bit weird (it just looks unfinished to me...also, like an elf ear...), and I'm not a fan of her hair or shirt...but the face is pretty happy-making!

One of the things I really found useful in the video (possibly my favorite tip) was that she encourages you do draw with colored pencils instead of graphite ones...among other reasons, because you can't erase colored pencil, so you don't get too fussy with your drawing...it stays loose.  I like that, because I am an over-eraser if nothing else...so this way makes me a little less of a freak...plus, you can see the sketch lines in places.  I love seeing that in other people's work, so anything that helps me get them in mine is aces in my book!

This is a two page spread I did using the front facing portion (which encompasses the majority) of the video, and I also used one of Joanne Sharpe's techniques from her video for the lettering:

"And it bothers me that I care."

Close up of the left page:

There is a lot of stuff going on in the background, which I don't know that the camera picks up very well...specifically, that the background is sparkly...  Also, I was using my industrial strength heat gun to dry the paint...and it started to bubble...which I found to be super cool, so I purposefully heat-bubbled the entire background...I probably have paint fume poisoning now, but the resulting bubbles light up my life...

And here's the right page close up:

I am happy with this gals hair!  If you've read the blog for a while now, you know that hair almost always eludes me...but I really like what's going on with this gal's luscious locks!  And I love the color of her eyes...is it egotistical to swoon over something you've done?  I'm swooning for the color, and technically, I didn't make the color, I just picked it...so can we say no...I don't want to come off all snooty! 

On a side note, now that I've taken this class of Jane's, I am really wanting to take another one of her classes, Express Yourself, which is about drawing emotions...I REALLY want to take this class!  I am saving my pennies as we speak...hehehe.

In regards to the above spread, "And it bothers me that I care", the mushy brain stuff overflows.  It's probably due in part to crap-tober, but then again, maybe crap-tober was due to the mushy brain stuff coming up...the circle of pessimism.  You get two points if you just tried to sing "circle of pessimism" to that song from the Lion King...

I saw something the other day that kind of hit a raw nerve with me.  "In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek."  It's supposed to be a French proverb.  I don't know if this is what it's supposed to mean, but when I read it, I immediately thought it meant 'there's always one person who loves more'.  And I think that 99.9% of the time, that's a true statement...at least it seems that way in my life.  And it's a frustrating truth.

On one hand, the downside.  You give and give and rarely get anything in return. Not that you give with the idea of receiving, but if love were equal, both people would have the other person's interests at heart.  But it's not equal.  So if your thinking only of the other person...and they're thinking of themselves too...you don't ever get your needs met.  And everyone deserves to receive the things they need.  It's hard enough to put yourself out there...and then to not have any kind of reaction to your effort, it hurts.  I'm tired of that kind of pain.  It makes me feel like nothing.  And I am not nothing.  I am a pretty decent person, as a matter of fact!

I said to someone once that all I wanted was to be appreciated.  And that hasn't changed.  I try hard to be a good person, to help people if I can, to be kind.  I try extremely hard to be the kind of person who is there for other people when they need me.  I don't think there are a great many people out in the world who honestly care about others, but I fight to be someone who does.  Because people deserve to have someone to care about them...all people do.  I just stop and question whether I have someone who does that for me in my daily life.  And even if I don't, I doubt that's the thing that bothers me.  That part I can deal with.  I just wonder if anyone notices that I truly care.  Does it matter?  Does anyone see it?  Has anyone ever said to themselves 'she doesn't have to be that way, but she is'?  I don't want glory or praise or whatever...I just want...acknowledgement, I guess...to know that I matter to somebody...to know that I make the hard parts a little bit easier for someone.  I feel lucky enough to have people in the online art community who make me feel...seen...who make me feel missed when I'm not around.  That's a really nice feeling.  I just kind of wish I had more of that in my daily life sometimes.

The other side of that whole loving more thing, is how can it be bad?  Why should I feel sad that I'm willing to extend myself for others, even if they don't notice?  It's not hurting anything, is it?  Would I be able to look at myself in the mirror if I stopped putting myself out there?  (No, I wouldn't...I've tried...it was an epic fail.)  The world can be a hard place, so if I can soften the edges by sending out good things, why should I question the worth of that goodness?  It's as much as I can do, and that's all that you can ask of yourself.  It's enough to do the good we can do as individuals.  It's enough.

So, point of the spread, is that it bothers me that I care whether anyone notices my effort.  I feel like a whiny, self-involved jerk about the whole thing.  But it's how I feel.  I can't...or I won't anymore...just dismiss that feeling.  I am learning that it's important to accept how I feel, the good and the mushy.  I need to understand why I feel the way I do, instead of trying to repress/cover over/lie to myself/etc.  I've learned that if I just cover things over, they just rise to the surface again...usually in a more ugly and hateful way than the first time around.

If I can understand why I feel like I do, then I can move forward. I can say "Self, I see why you feel that way...but have you thought about it like this?"  ...I guess I can reason with myself.  Sometimes I can work out an answer.  Sometimes, I can't.  But just the fact that I see and accept my feelings has been helping me to feel better about what goes on in my head...it's personal acknowledgement, I suppose.  I see myself.  Even if no one else does, I can finally see myself.  And that's a powerful thing.  And it's not a skill I've always possessed, so now that I am learning to do it, I feel so good about it!  I still have pity parties...we will call them most of last month...but being able to find my way out of it, that's priceless to me.

I know that I must not be the only person out there who feels this way...the world is a huge place and there's only so many feelings to go around.  So, I hope if you are feeling unnoticed, under-appreciated, or unloved, you will be able to see that, even if they never say it, there are people who notice you, there are people who appreciate what you do, and that there are people who love you.  But it's my sincere wish that, when you really need it, someone will whisper those good things in your ear and that you will believe them when they do.

Inner Excavations Week Four

This week's chapter for Inner Excavations has been "I see me..." and deals with how we see ourselves verses how other people see us, as well as the whole 'body issues' thing.  

In a previous post, I showed the photo I used (of myself) as a basis for this painting, and it was fun for me to see what people's reactions were.  I've done this before in one of the Facebook groups I'm in too.  It's also happened to me at my job, where I talk to people extensively on the phone without meeting them...then when I finally do meet them, it's interesting to gauge the reactions.  I tend to get a lot of "That's not what I thought you'd look like...at all...".  I get that one a lot when meeting the phone conversation type people from my work.  I honestly think that one's due to the fact that I have a phone voice that is what I like to call "high school cheerleader voice"...which does not really match my physical appearance so much.  It makes first meetings a little bit of a let down for the other person, if said person is interested in the ladies...  On the positive side, I could easily get a position as a phone sex operator if times got tough.  

I also get a lot of "cute" and "adorable" comments.  Which I'm totally good with...I mean, I AM cute and adorable!  :)  But it's taken me a really long time to come to terms with that.  One of the ladies I work with likes to tell me "Not every man likes a skinny girl...it takes all kinds."  Which, is true, although I think it comes with a little bit of pity/this-is-the-nice-thing-to-say attached when she says it.  There are totally guys out there who think thin girls are grody and thick girls are made for cuddling.  I'm married, so their opinions are pretty much meaningless for me either way.  But they ARE out there my single thick girls...way more than I realized when I was a single lady...so don't lose hope! 

Three years ago, when I first stared at the job I'm at now, before anybody really knew me/knew I was married, I had three separate incidences of guys being interested in me as a...'lady friend'...bow-chicka-bow-wow.  It was the craziest thing that ever happened to me.  I think mostly because I am oblivious to flirting. You basically have to honk a boob or try to suck on my tonsils before I realize you're being anything more than friendly.  So I never really think people are flirting, I just think they're being nice.  But these were pretty direct advances that even oblivious ole me could pick up on... 

I was telling my sister about my experiences right after they happened (because they kept getting progressively more...forward...and if there had been one more, he would have had to just pull out his wiener and slap me in the forehead with it for it to be any more "forward" than it was) and I remember that the thing I was most surprised about was that 'these guys don't even know me'. 

As I told my sister, I am, and have always been (except for the year and a half of being a skinny girl when I was 19/20 years old), the kind of girl that is friend first, building into more.  ALWAYS.  I mean, I'm not a hideous beast monster or anything, but I'm no prize pig either...and I tend to win dudes over with my personality.  (My personality is really sexy! haha)  I don't just catch somebody's eye when I walk past them!  I'm not that girl!  But here were three different instances in close succession which told me otherwise!  And I was kind of freaked out by it!  They were messing with my reality!  

This was part of my sister's response, directly quoted out of the email she sent me when all this happened (I keep the really important ones!  My sister is a wealth of knowledge/info/hilariousness!): "Obviously, you are not as physically ogre-like as you tell yourself because people do find you attractive even without [knowing of] your cunning, wit, and charm...not to mention your crafty skills..."

This was a big turning point for me, I think, regarding how I viewed myself.  Before this, I basically knew that people could 'get past' my physical appearance because (as previously mentioned) I have a good personality...but here was three separate evidences in short order that some people actually enjoyed my physical appearance!  That was an entirely new concept for me!  I basically learned that maybe that guy isn't looking at me because I have something stuck in my teeth...or a low hanging booger...or whatever.  Maybe that guy is looking at me because he thinks I'm hot stuff!  It was a radical concept for me...

I guess, more than thinking about how I see me vs. how others see me, I have been thinking about how I see me now compared to how I used to see me...because I didn't really have an accurate idea of what others thought of me at all.  I used to think of myself as plain...boring...annoying to others... an acquired taste...a total weirdo that was 'off-putting' to most people.  As I've gotten older (and possibly wiser), I've come to see that I was looking at things in the wrong light.  I'm not plain.  I'm cute and adorable!  In general, I'm DEFINITELY not boring...  I'm not annoying or off-putting, people like to be around me...people choose to be around me.  I might not be everybody's cup of tea, but for some, I'm their favorite flavor! 

The reason I say that this is more about how I see me than how other people do, when all the above things have to do with how people view me, is that, while I'm changing and growing as a person, I haven't completely overhauled my personality.  I've progressed, I've gotten rid of a lot of baggage, and I've matured, but for the most part, I'm still the same person.  Outwardly, I haven't changed a whole heaping huge amount.  But inwardly, the person I am now is vastly different.  I could have felt confident in myself all along, but I didn't.  I could have accepted (what I view as) my quirks and understood that those 'weird' ways are what make me interesting...but I didn't.  I wasn't at that point yet.  

I saw this quote a while ago that says "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."  I think that in my case, it should read 'accepting who you are'.  It's taken me thirty years, but I finally am learning that it's ok to be who exactly who I am.  Sure I have faults and flaws that I want to work on, things I want to improve about myself, and ways I still need to grow as a person...I'm sure I will continue to grow and evolve till the day I die...I hope so anyway.  But learning that, overall, at the heart of everything, who I am is just fine, that it's something to be proud of...that's been a real privilege for me.

And so here's the finished spread for Week Four of Inner Excavations: 

"I move forward.  I look at the past with love.  I will not look back with regret, because regret will only hold me back and I am determined to press on.  I am a work in progress and I am moving forward all the time.  Nothing can stop me.  I am a constant work in progress..."  The "I move forward" and the part on the left page are both stamps, the rest is just my (attempt at legible) handwriting.  The "I move forward" letters didn't show up well (there are pretty designs in the letters in the actual stamps)  so I went over and colored them in so that they would stand out.  I like that they are so BOLD! 

Thanks to Mo and Pamikins for the help with the journaling on this.  They both hit the nail on the head with their suggestions, and I really like the message combined with the painting in this.  It makes me super happy!

I did make a few changes to the face in this, including adding some shadow to the hair and changing the nose.  Thank you to Bibi for the suggestion about the nose, I think it is much improved now, and thank you to  Raine for pointing out the angles being different...it worked out much better with that new photo as a reference for the shading.  Now I feel like I've got two new tools in my arsenal of face making skills for the future as well!!!

I had written a lot of this post before the whole hospital stay happened, but just finished it up today.  I am still pretty puny, but am feeling even better today than I did yesterday, so fingers crossed that I will continue in the upward direction!  Thanks for all the well wishes and sweet words from yesterday's post.  I promise I will get back to all the comments, it's just gonna take some time, but I don't want you to think I would forget!  I am sending squishy love in all directions to meet each of you. <3

Blog-Along and Second Chances

Hello good people and welcome to day 1 of Blogalong with Effy.  Here's my attempt at 30 posts in 30 days. We're just gonna call it an attempt till it actually happens, ok?  No pressure...no pressure...  To learn more or to join in the fun yourself, please click on the Blogalong link in the left sidebar.

After the relative success of the layers on the last post, I got really inspired to try to fix some of the pages that have been sitting in my journals in a state of limbo.  Ugly, unfinished...both...  Anyway, I've got one to share with you today:

This page started out as an attempt to use Artist acrylic paints.  I have been admiring other people's use of them, so I got myself the basic colors (red, yellow, blue, black and white) to see how I fared.  In my head, they were going to be exactly like craft acrylics...they are NOT.  I can mix colors of craft acrylics with relative ease...getting exactly the color I hoped for in a matter of minutes.  Artist acrylics are not that way for me.  So I had stuck down some of the red and yellow on the page and mixed them a little to a really red leaning orange.  And this page sat untouched for several months because it was so eye-gougingly BRIGHT, practically painful to look at, and I had no idea what to do with it.

So I thought to myself, what bothers me about this page so much...and it was the extreme brightness that bothered me the most.  So I grabbed some Vintage Photo Distress Stain and went over the whole page to tone it down.  Phew...eyeball relief!  So the brightness was gone, and that helped a lot, but what to do next...

I've been watching some of Donna Downey's Inspiration Wednesdays on YouTube (which are SO interesting to watch...I love her "let's just try it and see what happens" attitude).  And she uses ink drops in a lot of her pages.  So I thought I might add some ink drops and see what happens...  What happened was I realized that there is some kind of magic technique to getting splattery drops that I have not learned yet...I really need to watch more closely when she ink drops I guess...  I ended up with pretty uniform circles of ink...not splaterry goodness.  So I improvised and turned my journal in a couple different directions so that the drops would run.  And WHAM!  It suddenly turned into something I liked and I knew where I wanted to go...

I have had that Tim Holtz "Fanciful Flights" die cutter forever, and I never use it, but it popped into my brain, so I grabbed it, cut out the shapes and went over them with some Glossy Accents.  While that dried, I got some Kraft Glassine (which is AWESOME) and crinkled and colored it using Distress Stains.  ...I just realized that this page could be an advertisement for Ranger products...where's my money Ranger???...  (haha...but seriously, pay me...)  I assembled my little butterfly dealie...and before anybody mentions it, I put the wings on backwards on purpose.  Seriously.  Seriously!!!  I think they look cooler that way!  Or at least different...make it your own, right?...  Then I outlined the butterfly in a red poster paint sharpie (I have found that the poster paint sharpies work a lot better for me than the other 'paint' sharpies, by the way!  I really want to get a white one and see if it works as well as the other colors...I have had bad luck with the other white 'paint' sharpies...maybe the poster paint one will tickle my fancy...)  Then I began the multi layered journaling of "If it weren't for second chances..." (a fitting line for this page that I picked out of the song below) I put gold sharpie, the red poster paint one, black sharpie and at last used a Pen-touch white pen which is where it finally stood out enough to be readable...so really, if it weren't for third, forth, or fifth chances, this writing would not have happened...