My Dad has a few more sewing cradles pre-made. They are on my etsy shop. They are not eligible for the 50% off sale, hence being on etsy and not artfire. The new price for these is $29.99 head over to etsy to get yours.

I don't know who Jeff Claasen is, but his sketchbooks are really nice.

Sketchbook #7, Drawings, Art from jeff claassen on Vimeo.

For those of you interested I've listed 19 new items in my shop. Mostly journals but I spent some time cleaning my cabinet in the studio and found a box of more old stock from my former website. Sigh. I have a half dozen sets of 12 5.5 mm core Prang colored pencils, don't scoff they are great colored pencils that blend well and have a nice color pallet. I've got more of those but only packaged up 6 of the sets. I also found 6 sets of Palomino pencils in a hard plastic case with and eraser. These are the Cadillac of pencils. Pricey but lovely pencils. I also found a few sets of Palomino colored pencils, sets of 6.  I found a few full boxes of design pencils in 4 hardness so I packed them into sets of 4 for a steal of a price. I've put together an art journaling colored pencil and pencil set that I have yet to photograph but will go up sometime this week. You can see the new supply section here.

I also listed a bunch of basic pocket sized journals covered in leather for a very good price and some recycled journals covered in sign vinyl. All are filled with different papers, so you're best heading over to my artfire shop and seeing what is listed.

ALso while rooting around in my studio cupboards I found a lovely one of a kind baby blue leather covered journal. I made it quite a few years ago, before we moved, so 4 or 5 years ago. I had colored the leather and the paper in it is really nice for writing but would perform very well for an art journal too. I don't know why it ended up in the studio cupboard rather than the etsy and artfire stuff. BUt it's neat to find something I made years ago and still like it. The spine design is neat. I don't make them like this anymore. It takes hours of stitching and work to get the spine in a design like that.

Here are some pics of it:

And yes, you can use the 50% off coupon NEWYEAR on all these newly listed items.

So here are the pics that I mentioned in my last post about slow journaling, the style I learned from Daisy Yellow's page.

The image above I drew the lines right to the edge of the page. This was done in ball point space pen.

For this one I drew a box about 1/4 inch from the edge and then drew m lines in. I could add a thick black border or fill the edge in with my pen… Or something else. This was done in Sharpie pen, fine point.

You'll have to excuse the TMI in this one. I had a DR's appointment and documented it here. I stared with a acrylic on gesso background, drew a border in and then the lines. I used a thick Martha Stewart pen for the writing.

For this one I started with another acrylic back ground. This time I drew random squares and rectangles all over it and filled those in with the lines, which I then wrote on with my Martha Stewart marker. This deals with a work issue so some of it is obscured. After I wrote I went back over it with my white jelly roll pen and added some highlights and stuff. 

With this page I glued down some elements and wrote on top of those but in the open area to the top right I drew in some lines and wrote on those with white jelly roll and my black martha stewart pen.

Anyway, with these pages you can see how diverse and interesting this technique can be. You can use it for an entire page, parts of a page or as a design element on a page. You can mix it up on a page too. Good stuff.

I enjoyed this video, I hope you do too.

I don't usually like a lot of shit (I use shit in a loving way) hanging off my journal. One or two things is enough for me, that and tabs, god I love me some tabs. I should do a video on how to make tabs for your art journals… (ideas)

Anyway. Check out this journal with super cool uneven pages, shit (like I wrote above, shit in a loving way.) hanging off of it from all sides and little tabs for flipping through it with ease. It's good stuff.

Rhomany introduced me to Daisy Yellow's concept of "Slow Journaling." I've been reading the daisy yellow blog off and on for some time but had missed the slow journaling post. If you've not read it yet, check it out. IT's a great idea, especially if you are like me and have seriously crappy handwriting or a background is just not speaking to you.

The concept is that you write very slowing, really thinking out each work and letter and it fills the lines.And the lines are lines you create. Basically you doodle lines on a page, make them thick and thin, wavering, spirals, circles etc… Make them how you like them, but make them. Then get out a pen and fill them, slowly. You can make whatever kind of letter appeals to you, outlines, shadows, in black ink, in pencil, in paint, whatever. Just write.

I'll get some pics up on here of the pages that I've done. You can vary the technique to whatever materials you have on hand. I've done these pages with a ballpoint (space pen), with a martha stewart permanent marker, paint pen, and sharpie pen. Each style of pen gives a different result. It feels different in the hand and on the paper. Also you can really vary the LOOK and feel of a page by varying the lines. I did a few experiments. I had one page where I wanted to fill the page fully with ink, so I did, flooded it right to the edge of the page. I had another I boxed the page off, giving myself a border. On yet another page, I glued some papers down and worked around that. THE final experiment was to take a background, draw squares and rectangles on it and then added the lines inside the shapes. the floating squares on a background was my favorite spread of pages so far.

Warning. This is a very slow and careful technique. A page where you might spend 5 minutes scribbling down a similar sentiment in plain writing might take 25 to 45 minutes with this technique. It's not something you can rush, but it's a technique to try.

I'll get some pictures of this up in my flickr account ASAP. Once you see it, you'll want to try it.

I love resist techniques. They always leave you ready for a surprise. I love that this video shows that you can use colors other than the standard old colors. Lots of fun!

This guy likes to paint nudes of women and abstracts then write poetry in his journals. Just goes to show that EVERYTHING goes in your art journal.

Harmony2
Originally uploaded by sadiepaula78

I'm not usually into pastel colors but these are pretty saturated. the texture in the colors is nice.