Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Journal Mania

This past weekend was spent constructing journals.....a thoroughly enjoyable two days at Michele's studio, with great friends, and putting together two different books under the guidance of the very talented and lovely Dawn DeVries Sokol.

Saturday was Tape  and Doodle Stew.  I brought along about 50 pounds of tapes; masking tape, tissue tape, duct tape, washi tape.....lots and lots of tape.  Which is what we used to bind the pages together, as well as decorate many of the pages.  The covers were made from a flattened cereal box, and the pages themselves, an assortment of papers, bits of previous projects, and items my friends and I kept swapping back and forth.  Oh, and of course, a bit of doodling too.









 
I used some favorite papers, and leftover pieces from a Lynne Perrella workshop, Julie Fei-Fan Balzar's stamp carving class, and some art done by friends.  I think that's what makes this book so appealing to me.  Of course the question (for me) always is......will I actually use this as a journal?  I'll let you know how that works out.
 
Sunday was Jingle Journal, advertised as a holiday journal, but I really don't celebrate anything so I opted for a winter theme instead.  For this book, we deconstructed a hard cover book and used the covers (painted and otherwise decorated), substituting our own papers, done with a very simple sewn binding, and only one signature.
 







 
 
A weekend of art, wonderful.  A weekend of art with friends, priceless.
 
 










Many thanks to Michele for organizing these classes, and to Dawn for a great two days.  Oh, and thanks Michele for the classroom photos, which I swiped from your Meetup board.  :))  Speaking of which, why not go and join Michele's Meetup group so you'll find out about future classes.  She always has something going on, in the works, or on the calendar.


7 comments:

teri said...

Your journal turned out so great - and I love seeing the holiday journal! It was such a fun day together on Saturday. I loved all the sharing and chatting!

bumblebee said...

Thank you for posting. You did a wonderful job on both journals. and I know what you mean about will you use the journal. lol I truly enjoyed being with you. Hope we get more opportunities. fondly bz betti zucker bettiz@me.com

Dorothy said...

Wow, what fun! The books are great!
Is that sushi "grass" i see on one of the pages?
Genius!!

craftyM said...

I love the beautiful orange finger nail polish myself! oooola la... beautiful! :-)

The tape journal reminds me of "remants of the day" journals with the cool addition of tape for binding... Nice!
Marita

Patzee said...

These two days were so much fun! I especially liked how random bits would be added to each of our work areas. And these pieces were instantly added to a page. No long decision-making process. I remember who gave me each special element. And yes, that IS sushi grass!

Michele said...

Great job on both journals! I'm going to use my journals for practicing my doodles and zentangles. And thanks for the meetup site shout outs!

Anonymous said...

So nice to see some familiar faces enjoying art time together. Love the journals, great ideas for all those 'special' tapes I have been hording, I mean saving :}
Hugs and happy thanksgiving, nancymayer (nancyquilt)