A journal and some pen and ink...

Well, after about eight hours of babysitting my little Odj Podje (as we sometimes call Audrey) I found myself in an empty house and decided to do a little something. (I did get in a long nap after daughter Micah came home from work and found the house empty upon waking. Hubby wasn't home yet, so...)

I've been wondering what to do with the exquisite cover of my 1904 copy of  "A Child's Garden of Verses".  I had removed the pages and lined the cover with some flannel material and was going to use it as a "folder" to put stuff in. But I decided to make it into an actual journal.

I'm not very complex when it comes to these things, so I took all of the watercolor and bristol paper I had left in my tablets, folded them in half and they are now residing in the cover. Next, I will poke some small holes along both sides of the spine and thread some sort of cording through these to hold the pages, which will have corresponding holes in them. I know I "should" sew all of my pages into signatures, etc, but I'm just too lazy, and, after all, there ARE NO RULES when it comes to having fun with art, right? So now I feel better that this cover will actually be used as a journal instead of sitting forlornly on the bottom shelf of my slant top desk. I love this idea of using old books for journals. They are just too charming to leave on the bookshelf and I'll NEVER run out of drawing paper, lol!

The Sketchbook Challenge for this month is Urban Sketching, which is a challenge in itself since I live in the country!  But after reading their definition of urban sketching I'm thinking it really means drawing from your own natural environment, so that's what I'll be doing. This is a sketch of some art supplies on my art desk.

I think it will take some time and practice for me to get the hang of drawing over text so that the drawing shows up better. I know I can gesso over it, but I don't like working on top of gesso. Besides, I've seen others do it without gesso and theirs looks great. So experimentation is in order. I may get it figured out by the time I fill this journal. I anticipate lots of fun in the mean time! :D

Well, hubby arrived as I was beginning this blog post and has promised me chicken strips at Dairy Queen if I ride along with him to pick up some hay. It's a date! :D 

 Four hours later: My trip to town bore even more fruit than expected. Besides the dinner at Dairy Queen we stopped off at Wal-mart, and on a whim I went in to look over the drawing pens in the office supply aisle. Seventeen dollars later I emerged from the store with this small stash!

I've seen commercials on TV about the Ink Joy pens and hope they live up to the hype! The little bottles of acrylic paint cost 53 cents, except for the black and white which were 97 cents. Probably not the best quality, but good enough for me to mess around with! The sketchbook was too neato to pass up. It's made in England. Does that mean it's wonderful? Once again, good enough to play in! So I'm a happy camper. Oh, and besides that I sketched the Wal-mart garden center while I was waiting for hubby in the truck (before I was struck with the whimsy to go inside...).

Then I took this photo from our front yard. I may use this as my header over at my Backwoods Crazy Quilt blog.

Have a wonderful weekend. Ours has been sunny and beautiful and promises to stay that way. Maybe we'll plant some flowers tomorrow.

Shalom!