permission

This book brought me JOY this week....I bought it months ago and hadn't read it yet.... but since I'm back to wanting to fill sketchbooks it was the right time to read it. And guess what.....in it  Cathy Johnson gives us permission to use our sketchbooks just as we want! I'm not being sarcastic .... that really makes me happy! It's so easy with art to think I should do this ... or that. or try to do traditional watercolors without my pen lines around my ladies, blah, blah blah and on and on. Maybe it's just me but I always get hung up thinking there's rules, and I don't know why since noone ever TELLS me to do this or that. I tell me. In this book she says do it however you want and gives lots of great inspiring examples of doing it your way. And just like I decided last week and wrote I was going to put it all in one book, I read the next day where she said to go ahead and put in zentangles and mandalas if that's what you enjoy doing. I think she was really talking just to me... really! so here's some of my random stuff I sketched, oh and my new sharpie pens that make it more fun to sketch.... I've actually almost used them both up in the 1 1/2 weeks I've been using them!

You'll have to go back to last week's post to see why I'm sketching monkeys....

 Tomorow I will have more  zentangles and more mandalas....

This week...

Hello, another week's come around... We've had a few horrible, no good, very bad days here...so I've been too busy too post. I have made treasuries on etsy though... they're great as an escape from things as they're quick, and creative. If you've never made one it can be addicting. You pull together art, photography and etsy items and create a mood. Like some people match an outfit or plan a quilt or whatever, by picking the right colors and styles and themes. I've done ones lately with themes like: when I wear my bay bracelet I feel like the lady of the lake, the lillypads wait for me and the dragonflies know my name...
and when I wear my alpaca shrug I feel like a goddess on Mt. Olympus!. They're fun. If you want to see them you can click on my shop on the right sidebar, go to my profile and click on latest treasuries. I'm even thinking in treasuries now... maybe I shouln't admit this, lest you think I am crazy but I was driving to work, it was rainiy and all of the sudden lately very green. Its a curvy road, lots of trees and a creek beside the road... such a  pretty, watery scene. I was thinking how pretty, when a new white truck came toward me from the other direction. I immediately thought, "NO, that's wrong, it doesn't fit. But thank goodness it wasn't red, that would have been totally out of place but an old junker Ford Pick-up might have been better!" That's when I realized I may be spending too much time on etsy!

So anyway... earlier this week I did get some things done...I finished the two tiny needlefelted worlds...

And my daughter made this...a little needlefelted box for a tooth fairy or a ring...

and I have been working on my palette. It will be done next week...

 And I received My sisterhood of the traveling sketchbook in the mail from PritiLisa. It's a wonderful shrine box! The one photo shows her first page and my page for May! I did a painting of a girl in a pink bathrobe as I remember a trip to Washington DC when I was young when I went outside early in the morning still in my bathrobe and could smell sooooo many spring flowers and flowering trees!

Thanks for stopping by, Rememeber to check out all the friday sites (fiberarts friday, paint party friday, creative friday, crafty friday and whimsical wednesday) on my sidebar and stop by the other Sisters blogs to see what they've done in their sketchbooks! Have a good week! thanks for visiting!

Sisterhood of the traveling sketchbooks

This is what's on my workdesk today... The sisterhood is a group of 13 women  and we've all purchased sketchbooks and are going to mail them around the globe each month, after we've each painted a spread  in one of the sketchbboks. We've just been working out the details and finally got started. As there's 13 of us... the first spread painted is in our own sketchbook as a way of introducing ourselves , then after that our painting will each be based on the month we're in.... our feeling about May for example...and at the end of 13 months we'll get our own book back, full of great stuff! My first spread is of 2 women, both "me", exept I really don't look like this ... one on a bad day , the other on a much better day. That's just the way it goes.

I still have to decorate the cover but I've got a few weeks before we have to mail it out so I'm all set. I plan to get the other sisters blogs posted up on my sidebar soon so you can all check out everyone else's sketchbooks as they progress too. So exciting!

And I have another big project I started last night ,,, I should have photos of that by friday!
Oh and I almost forgot... go here:
http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/2011/04/whats-on-your-workdesk-wednesday-96.html
 to see more workdesks! It's fun to "snoop" if you have time...