I admit I'm not too much of a holiday person as a baker it's all about the food for me. So as a holiday treat I give you Artistic Biker's video about holiday decorations. That man wields a mean spray can!

Love this page, especially the little bits of floating text!

This one is quick.

Sketchbook so far…. from Bethan Heslop on Vimeo.

I'

m a sucker for a typewriter.

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Originally uploaded by Sketchbuch

we can all dream of going to a place where we draw pictures and people give us fruit. life would be good then huh?

I really like how this lady chronicles her life with her art journals.

book 20 (oct 1993 – apr 1994) from womanonfire on Vimeo.

So Ive outgrown Windoze MovieMaker. Actually I had always thought it sucked giant hairy dust bunnies but it wouldn't let me edit into the format that I wanted for the classes. So I'm looking for something new. I first headed over to cnet  read some reviews on video editing software. I was surprised that the corel video studio was higher rated than the adobe software. Mostly becuase of the crashing issues. In their review they said that the Corel was slow, but I'm not noticing that at all. If anything now that I've learned how to use it, it's much faster than MovieMaker.

The other software I'm going to try out is the Adobe video editing software. The only issue with it is that if you don't buy it, the trial version put a watermark on the final video. 

I've tried a few others, what have you tried?

(Also check out the video about the Ning group below!)

well folks I have been drearily under the weather today. It's been abysmal. I think I've only been awake for a few hours here and there. I wake up, sip some tea or ginger ale and then fall asleep again. I'm feeling slightly coherent for the first time in well, all day.

Would you believe it's taken me most of the day just to get the paragraph above from my head to the computer? Man I'm beat.

In art journaling news: The Ning site is up and it's starting to get really neat. If you are interested in art journaling or journaling in general head over to the group, join and check it out. There are a few free workshops up already. I'm well into working on 2 paid workshops on 2 types of bookbinding as well as making recycled scrap covers for lots of book projects. It's going to be SUPER awesome. There are no other words to describe it but super awesome. Jonathan Manning (AKA @artisticbiker) has set up a really great tutorial on making marbled like paper with spray paint and man is it ever cool. I can't wait to use it as a book cover!  There is now a forum to discuss prompts, stenciling techniques, and a lively discussion about art book vs art journaling.

I'm excited, can you tell?

The other thing I'm excited about are podcasts. (I know how 2007 of me) Ricë Freeman-Zachary has been putting together some of the most wonderful podcasts. She is interviewing some wonderful artists and many of them art journalers! (Squee) She just put one up with Kelly Kilmer and it's divine. You can find it here, but you can also download it off iTunes for free. I just downloaded the entire library of Ricë's podcasts to keep me company during my hellish commute. Additionally if you find her on iTunes you'll find a whole host of other creative types with some good stuff too! (you'll also find an artist I love but whose voice grates on me like nails on a chalk board)

I've not been art journaling as much because I've been fighting off this cold for about 3 days, but I shot a few pics of stuff I had been working on and I made some wrapping paper last night. Every year I make my wrapping paper out of recycled materials. I scrounge kraft paper and newsprint out of boxes at work, flatten it and bring it home. Normally I sit infront of the TV with my sharpies and a few stencils and doodle out a few sheets here and there. We gave up cable this summer and my LCD tv is about to become my monitor (not totally kiding as it's been sitting, unused for close to 3 or 4 months now) I needed some paper fast for my secret santa gift for work. So I banged out a 2 part stencil. First layer-  rays radiating out from the center of a star. Second a big star. I used silver spray paint for the rays. Then I put the star over the center of the rays and hit it with a layer of red, then a spot of silver, then a spatter of red again. I wasn't too perfect about anything as I wanted to let the silver over spray a bit. I call it my bad ass wrapping paper. Perfect for men, women, kids and totally cool, even hipsters drunk on PBR will like it and want to wrap their thrifted gifts with it's awesomeness.

See it here:

 The pic isn't that great, I took it in a dark room, so you'll just have to trust me on it's total awesomeness.

Another thing that I've been experimenting with, something I havne't done in, well ages, since high school is adding photos to my journal. I usually avoid it because I want to avoid the look of, well, a scrap book. Yeah, I said it. I'm no scrapbooker. I don't want people to think that my art journals are scrapbooks with paint. (hangs head) I like scrap books when other people make them, but they aren't MY thing. Does that make sense? Anyway I got this Pogo for a Christmas gift and I'm in love. It's so freaking awesome I'm taking pictures of the dog, the couch, my morning commute (break lights all the way) I'm printing pictures like crazy and I'm loving it. OMG the pogo is the shit. 2×3, business card size, you could attache these thing to anything with the peel and stick stuff on them, ATC, journals, scrap books, The possibilities are endless. So I had to do it.

I did a self portrait when I got to Maine after an interesting and mostly uneventful drive. Then I STUCK it in my travel journal. Yup. It's there. I added a drawing and some gesso and here it is:

And you know what? I love it and it doesn't look like a scrapbook at all to me.

So this part of the post is a reactionary tale don't go further if you aren't in the mood for a good old fashioned rant.

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Designers seem to love the moleskines. They should try the handmade versions for better paper and covers and less hype.

Moleskine Sketchbook Completed from able parris on Vimeo.

Another sketchbook video. This person has them dated and numbered and has loads of videos up on vimeo.

book 8 (26 sept 1990 – 19 dec 1990) from womanonfire on Vimeo.