Wednesday, January 18, 2012

What's new at The Loft - Episode 107

Art Journal Play

The New Year for me is about the renewal of a quest, the pursuit of a dream, and the beginning of new adventures and challenges.   Challenges can be inspirational, frustrating but also great motivators.  I had first hand experience with this when I did my ATC 365 challenge in 2010.  So aside from other projects I hope to get off the ground in 2012, I have also recently joined the Art Journal Everyday group hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs.

I have been following Julie's blog for a few years now and she is always a great source of inspiration.  Her Art Journal Everyday group is what I call a great no pressure challenge.  All it requires (which is not really a requirement, more like a goal to strive for) is for you to work in your journal for 10 minutes everyday.  You don't have to complete a page everyday, it could be as simple as just laying down a background, but the hope is to have at least one page to post to Julie's site and the group Flickr pool once a week.  You can visit my flickr pool to see my entries this year so far.

So instead of sharing those entries I thought I would share some other art journal pages I have done in the past. 













 The way I work is to lay down a background or start a foundation for a page, but if I get stuck creatively or I'm not happy with the direction things are going I move on and come back to it later.  So it goes without saying that I tend to have some "works in progress" in my art journal which I have shared below.  






I'll post pictures of the completed pages another time.


Art journaling is a great way to experiment with new products and techniques and a fantastic creative outlet.  I have never been one to keep a "traditional" journal as I do not like recording my own personal thoughts, but with art journaling I've found I can share something of myself  in a different way.

If you are an art journaler drop me a line.  Comments are welcome, so don't be shy about telling me what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

What's new at The Loft - Episode 106

Happy New Year from The Loft!!!


How we spent our Christmas vacation!


For the second year in a row we spent Christmas at the Disney Resort at Vero Beach.  We arrived on Christmas Eve and as usual the resort looked very festive


 

 

 
Christmas Day was beautiful and sunny, and we spent the whole day on the beach

 


 



 

During our vacation we also played some mini golf



 

 
And we took time to admire the resort staff's annual Gingerbread house competition.  This years theme was Hawaii, in celebration of Disney's newest resort there.


 







We all had a great time and was sorry to have to go home.  Our time there always seems to go by so fast.

So how did you spend your holidays?  Drop me a line and let me know.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon