Its been a quiet but beautiful couple of days here. Warm and windy perfect Halloween weather. Also great art journaling weather. I had hoped to get out yesterday and draw at the park or beach but it ended up being far too windy for that. Instead I sat at home and made 2 technique videos and a possible video for materials. I thin that the art journal materials video would be better as a page on this blog than a video.

The second new video isup on youtube and I'll put it at the end of this entry behind a cut for faster loading. I'm still getting used to the camera but so far so good.  It can only get better from here.

If you haven't heard about the storm taking over the art/ visual journaling world here it is NaNoJouMo! Head on over to d'Blogola to get more info and the daily one word prompts. The idea is to work in your art journal everyday, which is a goal I can get behind. You don't have to finish a page every day just put something into your journal everyday. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it everyday, considering what is going on for me from the 18th to the 30th of November. I 'll be in Maine then while my Mom has open heart surgery and then I'll be getting her settled back home and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The surgery has already made its way into my journal in the form of lots of anatomical hearts and rib cages.

Over the next week I'm going to be shooting videos for the rules of art journaling- I've posted about them here before, so we'll see how that translates to the tiny screen.

I've been working on some transfer techniques in my journal. Years ago when I was working for a crazy company that had taken over a building that had previously housed a rug store and previous to that an audio visual sales warehouse we founds several boxes of inkjet transparency film.* I should have snagged it all but convinced myself I shouldn't DOH! Sadly I've only got 50 sheets left but oh what a blast it's been. First thing I learned- print on the right side of the film. If I accidentally print on the wrong side of the film the images are a total bitch to get off the plastic sheet. Oh and let me tell  you how awful it is. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call the cops due to my cursing. I prevailed and I have several nice transfers in my journal. The other thing I learned? Don't use too much matte medium. Yup. Need to find just the right amount. Liberal spreading of the medium and moderate bone folder pressure and not allowing it to dry completely is best. I may do a video on it. It could be a fun thing to try with my own drawings as well as the fun anatomical clip art I found on line here. It says it's for educational use, but I recognize many of the images from a giant clip art book I bought in college that was copyright free.

*Yes I know INKJET in a laser printer? What was I thinking? I was thinking my fuser is about blown anyway so I may as well try it out, if it ruined it oh well, I need a new one anyway. Great thing is, that it worked out just fine.