Art journal technique photos and mailbox goodies!

I'm taking a technique workshop using The Decorated Page (DPW) by Gwen Diehn. It's being offered at one of my yahoo groups, Artists of the Round Table. And, it's free. Furthermore, it's pretty much self-paced, so it's still not too late to join.

I'm using both a Moleskine sketchbook and a watercolor notebook, and my theme is 'DPW techniques'...so the notebook's going to be a technique journal. The watercolor sketchbook hopefully will be a catch-all for watercolored sketches and drawings, to which I will add any assignments that require me to sketch and/or watercolor.

Anyway, check out what I've done so far in my notebook journal. First, I was supposed to remove a page (I removed 2 pages):

I took my Tim Holtz acrylic ruler and tore the 2 pages from the center of the journal. Because the ruler is clear acrylic and there are measurement lines in both directions on it (length and width), it's so easy to line up a line on the ruler over the center stitched crease and tear a straight edge. I left two 1.5-inch "stubs" (on purpose, you will see why later).

Our second assignment was to add an envelope to our journal. I got a wild idea up my head to make a pocket envie out of two of the journal pages and I love how it ended up. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever think this up, but the idea came to me like I was, and I created my instructions as I went. Here's the finished product first, so you can see and get a feel for where I'm going in my instructions:

The envie is open -- I put the pink paper in there to show it better.

To start the envie, I needed to make a half-moon oval shape on the first page, and nothing I had in my stencils was big enough. I finally got to use my flex design rule! To shape the rule, I wrapped it tight against the lip of my round laundry basket. Once you form your shape on the rule, it holds it beautifully, because it has a thick lead core surrounded by semi-hard rubber vinyl.


LOVE my flex rule. I've had it a couple of years (in fact, I have another one that is longer, too), and thanks to this workshop I now know how valuable a tool it is. I just positioned the rule on my page and tore like I did with my ruler. Viola, torn shape!:


Next, I folded the second page over the half-moon page, burnished the crease, and this is what I had after measuring the second page sections and writing them down:


I cut paper in those measurements and adhered them to the sections, then colored around the edges with markers and a little paint. I also cut paper for the half-moon page and traced the curve on the paper to cut out. Here's what it looked like after that step:


All that was left to do was put lines of red tacky tape on each edge of the half-moon page to adhere it to the second page, to form the envie pocket. You saw in the first photo what it looks like open. And here is what it looks like all closed up:


This is the back of the pocket envie. Since it is the lefthand side of a new spread, I left it alone for now, but you get more of an idea of the envie:


Okay, the next assignment was to add a page of different paper, and I glued some KMI Dirty Laundry paper to the center of my journal, in between those two page stubs from the first assignment.
Front:

Back:


Next, we were to laminate a page. Normally, this conjures up thoughts of Xyrons and clear plastic, but in the book it merely means to glue an entire page onto a journal page, lol. I went to the last page of my journal and adhered another piece of the KMA paper to that last page:


The next assignment was to add some tab dividers. I did not want to do this, because I felt it should be done at the end. All of these assignments are things the author says to do in the book, so I feel this is a fault with her. The purpose of tab dividers depends upon the reason you are using them. So, until one knows what's in the journal, how do you know how to divide it? This is why I used Redi-tab tapes made of repositionable tape. I will make nicer ones later if I use them at all, but each assignment earns a star and I wanted all my stars. ;-)


The last assignment for Lesson 1 was to trim some page edges. Since my pocket envie when closed left about 1.5" of the page behind it to show, I decided to tear a couple of those pages. They would be more easily seen that way. I chose a deckle ruler and tore:

I included the torn out page parts in this photo to show the leftovers from this entire lesson. Don't know why I did that, but whatever.

This stuff so far has been easy-peasy to do, just a little time-consuming because you know I gotta make it complicated, lol. This week we are to decorate our covers. I'll have to stress over what I want it to look like and say. I may opt out for a simple solution...one can only hope! I got other stuff to do.

OH! Guess what I got in the mail this weekend! A gorgeous gorgeous hand painted and dye silk scarf from my friend Rose! She is on my ArtShare list. The design reminds me so much of the old Peter Max designs of the 1960's, and I LOVE the purples in it, so soothing to look at. I can't wait to hang it in my new craftroom once I get all settled in there (hopefully by this fall). THANKS, Rose, it is awesome!
Here's a shot of it draped over my chair:

And a close-up of the design (it kinda shimmers):