Tuesday, July 26th
Today was much cooler than it has been lately and Jason encouraged me to go outside and enjoy my garden.
So, I gave myself permission and I did just that!
Give yourself permission
In this fast paced world we live in, it’s important to give ourselves permission to just BE…to sit still…to rest…to sleep…to enjoy life…
In the garden
I watered and dead-headed my plants, sprinkled some lettuce seeds to see if they will sprout fast enough to feed the little bunny that we’ve been seeing out there.
And then, I took the cover off my beautiful table to work on some art.
You see, I haven’t allowed myself to take the cover off of my table this year because I wanted to complete my new patio and put the table and new umbrella in their new locations before I took the cover off.
Incentive
It was a kind of incentive to do the hard work of leveling the ground and setting the pavers in place.
But I need Jason’s help and he just doesn’t have the time and truly, it’s not important to him because he can’t understand my vision for the back garden and would probably never use the table himself, anyway.
Sure, he’ll come out and have a glass of wine with me on a Friday evening, if I’m already down there but he never chooses to be out there.
We grew up very differently and I think that has a lot to do with it.
Our home was literally surrounded by decks, gardens, water (many ponds and later a swimming pool)and then backed by woodlands.
Once the decks had been built and most of the gardens planted, my step father had a swimming pool put in for all of us.
I remember going to the pool store with him, my Poppa Bear. It was called ABC Pools, which I thought was a strange name but I was too shy to ask anyone at the store why it was called, “ABC.”
Our swimming pool was so beautiful, with sparkling blue water.
It’s been nearly 32 years since we moved away from that home and I still long for that pool. On hot summer days, I crave to jump into a pool, float and swim, feel the cool water…
We had beautiful wooden outdoor furniture with lovely cushions and I remember that shopping for this furniture was a big deal.
One of the rituals of summer was that every morning my mother would place all the beautiful cushions on the chairs and loungers and every evening, she would put them back away.
I know it sounds silly but there was something magical about it.
I long to have my patio done and my lovely furnishings in place so that I can do the same but…
It looks like it be another year before that happens.
This is not meant to be a criticism of my husband, it’s just the facts.
Anyway…
I finally took the cover off of my beautiful wooden table, washed one of my lovely black wrought iron chairs and put my pretty mint green cushion on it.
It’s not expensive furniture but it’s what I could afford.
I spent a lot of time searching for the furniture I wanted and I really do adore it!
But, time was getting away from me and I really wanted to get some art done before I had to put everything back away and fix dinner.
Jane Davenport
Jane is one of my favorite artists. She’s beautiful, sweet, kind and bubbly! Not to mention, I love her art!
I have a few online art classes by Jane Davenport waiting on my workshops to-do list.
Jane, like many art teachers, believes in working in journals.
At the start of each class, she usually has you start by either making an art journal from scratch or adapting a premade journal.
Once you’ve made or adapted your Journal, you then decoupage or paint a number of pages and those pages become backgrounds for paintings that are yet to come.
For this class’s journal, my plan is to adapt one of Jane’s premade journals by removing a page set from each signature. A signature is each grouping of papers.
Removing the pages from the signature often loosens the threads that are holding the signatures together.
So, once I’ve removed all the pages that I plan to remove, I will decoupage over the strings where I took out the pages.
This helps to reinforce the spine.
Why teachers like art journals
The idea is that working in a journal will help a student to feel less inhibited with their art work because you can simply close the covers and no one else sees your work.
For me, it’s the opposite.
I feel less inhibited working on loose paper because it is easier to tear up a really horrible piece of work or hide it and come back to it later.
Whereas, it’s much more difficult to do that if you are working in a journal and then that bad piece of art work is just sitting in there taunting you, knowing you can’t do a thing about it! Lol
But I love learning different ways of making journals and Jane always teaches a couple different techniques.
So, I got started adapting my art jounal today.
My art journal theme
I have some lovely Frida Kahlo papers left over from my last trip to Chicago and I’ve decided to use them.
Of course, I forgot to photograph more than the first set! Lol So, I’ll attach most of the pages later.
Here’s the first one I did in this journal:
