Here we go again

It's January. That time of year where we all start new projects. New eating regimens. An exercise program. So of course my friend Cathy and I are once again enrolled in the Documented Life project. Of course we are.

The Documented Life Project has been evolving on the net for the past few years. It is four artists who are friends, and lend their talents to the 'verse for free. If you are interested, please visit their blog here. You can register for the academy, and for emails concerning the weekly posts. What is this? It is free (always nice) prompts and demos on art journals. For example, each individual artist posted a video on their individual blogs this past week for the first journal entry. The prompt was to use book (actually any text) paper, and the phrase "Be Your Own Goal Keeper".

This year we are using the Dyan Reavley large journal. You can use whatever you like, but of course because it's Cathy and Linda, we had to spend money on new art supplies. I bought one journal yesterday to get started (my other two were full), and a second journal is on order. One of the artists, Lorraine Bell, demonstrated a black pencil called Blackwing. We had never heard of this, so Cathy found it on Amazon. 22 pencils are on order, because hey! one can never have enough pencils and that was the way to get a deal.

Cathy is now intrigued with the new paint line by Dina Wakley for Ranger products. I have one tube of this paint and yeah, it's pretty neat. I like it. But I also have 68 bottles of craft paint, 14 tubes of a slightly better quality of acrylic paint, and 20 bottles of Golden paint, which is expensive and my favorite. Various other brands are mixed in. How much paint do I need? A rhetorical question, because I know damn well paint will be purchased or ordered shortly. It's the way we roll.

This is my hobby. This is also somewhat of an obsession. There are stacks of blank canvases, containers of paper products, baskets of punches, die cuts, bags of alphabets, drawers of stamps and stamp pads. Speaking of which, I watched a demo on Youtube on how to carve your own stamps. So I tried it. So easy. I can see how this could become an addiction. The part I didn't like was using the stamp I carved. I had ink everywhere because you don't have a lot to hold onto. Will that stop me? No, of course not.

My drafting table is set up next to the north window. The only window.

Uh huh. No surface untouched.

Pathetic

The 2015 art journal front cover

The back cover

 In my defense, it is only the dogs and I living in the house. I close the door when I'm done for the day, and rarely leave the door open. I have quite unintentionally locked dogs in this bedroom. There is a feeling of freedom to be able to physically close the door on the mess, and know that it will be untouched until I return.

So. Does it appear I need more supplies? No. It does not. Will that stop me/us? Nope. In fact, there are two packages in transit to Cathy's house. She is practicing restraint. If she wasn't, there would be 5 packages in transit. Trust me, I have been down this road before. It's always nice to lose your mind with a friend....
Linda