Little detours...

Thought I would share a couple things I fiddled with last week while I was sickly. I guess I needed to divert my energies toward some other less pressing to-do's for a little while. At any rate, it was like childlike free-playing...no deadlines, worries or fears of failure.

I made my very first hand-carved stamp with a Pink Pearl eraser and an blade #11 Exacto knife. Yup, there will be no licensing contracts coming my way for it, to be sure, but hey, to me it's huge because it was a fear I had that I overcame.

Last fall, one of the "courses" in my little semester of online art school was studying Lynne Perella's book Artists' Journals & Sketchbooks. Actually, it was there, IF I had the time, which I didn't. But, the book study group is still going on and I've saved the lesson plans in hopes of seeing how far I can get with it, maybe catch up.

One of the lessons is to carve your own stamp. As soon as I originally saw the lesson, fear gripped my heart. I've never been a sculptor or a carver. And knives are not my favorite tool. But last week I guess I wanted to live dangerously, or at least adventurously. I thought to myself, Self, why not just try it on a Pink Pearl? I have like a dozen of them or more. What can it hurt? Just try, I told myself.

So I did, and it was lots more fun and lots easier than I thought it would be. I purposefully went for a rustic look, not a polished one, since I knew my finished product would be pretty rudimentary. It'll make a cool background stamp or art stamp, I think. And I'm pretty proud of the pitiful little thang...wouldn't you be? winkwink

Another thing that I did was start to create my ABC journal that I've been wanting to do. For the cover, I'm using an old ancient diary of Missy's that I couldn't bear to throw out. It's fur and its Tigger. Gotta use it!

I'm calling it "Tigger Words" for now. "ABC with Tigger & Me" is the second choice. I'm titling the front cover last, so I'll let those ideas simmer for a while. My first chore was to divide the pages by alphabet letter, so I had tons of fun creating tabs with my templates and paper scraps. 99% of them are attached with eyelets, too, and I plan to collage the pages with paper and ephemera. Not planning to paint a thing.

I'm kinda tired of painting pages. Seems like I'm not alone, either. More and more people are paper-piecing, dry collaging, layering papers and found objects, sewing them on, attaching with metal embellies or just adhering with gluestick. I plan on incorporating my stamping, drawing and smaller art pieces. Whatever strikes me. I'm gonna try to get one A page done by month's end...at least get it started. And I'm not going to re-bind the book with my Bind-It-All until I finish it.

I haven't really had a chance to find Tigger-themed items for my ABC journal yet, but I did chance upon the sweetest tiger stamp to use. It's a Dee Gruenig Posh Impressions stamp and should add to my logo-ing nicely. I know I can find Jolee embellies that are Tiggery, but I'm also gonna be on the lookout for stickers and anything else. Let me know if you see anything Tiggerish out there, okay?