Hello 2011

I'm greeting the new year with some photos from a journal I signed up for back in the fall.  It's the Sketchbook Project (see the logo link on my sidebar), and I have to have it postmarked and in the mail by January 15.  I'm just about finished, and as journaling more often is one of my goals for the new year, I thought this was a good way to start 2011 off.

Everyone who signed up received a blank journal and a theme.  Mine is Dirigibles and Submersibles.  I didn't select it (though I could have); instead I let the organizers give me a theme, and I was very pleased with the one I was given.  It seems very steampunky to me, and that's more than OK.

I created a fictional character, one Harrison Maxwell Adams (known to his friends as Max), inventor, explorer, and all around great guy.

My pages are meant to be the ramblings and random notes and pictures of Max's would be biographer (in other words, me). 
I've done some drawing, lots of collage work, rubber stamping, and different backgrounds.  Graphic 45 lovers will recognize papers from their Steampunk Debutante collection, and my fellow Tim fans will notice I've used some of his idea-ology pieces.  Most of the rubber stamps I used are from Oxford Impressions.  (Though I did manage to get my favorite Wendy Vecchi stamp -- the art chick -- in there, as well as a Tim stamp or two).  None of the pages have a really finished look, and I used my own handwriting much more than I normally do.  I took the word "sketchbook" to heart, and wanted my book to feel like quickly done sketches of a life, even if the pages actually weren't all that quickly done.

For shipping and storage reasons,  all journals had to retain their original outside measurements, so I had to resist the temptation of having any doo dads dangling off the sides.

My journal, and the journals of the some 28,000 others who signed up, will be traveling around the country, with a starting point in my "home town" of Brooklyn, NY.  Just click on the sidebar logo for more information and to see if the sketchbooks will be visiting your home town.

It feels good to start the new year with a project I committed to, and saw through to completion.  Here we go: