New Year

The only resolutions I made for this year were reading resolutions.. which I did not even come close to keeping >.>

HOWEVER- look at all the books I made and/or filled this year! :)

Plus a few more I gave to friends or sold. 
That mitigates my failure some, right? ;)

Anyway, here is my first journal calendar of the new year:

I made it the same time I did the one for December, but it took me awhile to decide how I wanted to decorate it. I'm not really into holiday or seasonal themes, and since I live in California- a snowy January page seemed silly.

I ended up using a photocopy of one of my Alice in Wonderland drawings.

I searched for quotes from the book, and decided "Begin at the beginning & go on 'til you get to the end" seemed appropriate for  the first month of a new year. :)

Happy New Year :)

Some Doodles

(in reverse chronological order!)

I was watching the lovely & talented Jennibellie's video & when she was stamping the circles this lady with her insanely tall Rococo hairdo popped into my head & demanded to be painted! Immediately. (She's very demanding!)

 

Including her hair- she is 9 inches tall.
I used shimmy watercolours & Sakura stardust pens so she is quite sparkly & fabulous :)

 

"Plenty of Fish in the Sea"

This image has been lurking around my imagination for a LONG time (years) & I finally decided to draw it in my little doodle style.. She is modelled after my sister lol

 

The dress is painted in glitter glue which actually turned out pretty well I think.

 

Just a little journal page doodle.. don't you hate it when your mirror talks back to you? ugh

Another little doodle for a journal page.
Just to clarify- this is NOT meant to be Audrey Hepburn.. it is me (or rather my doodle persona) dressed up as Audrey Hepburn >.> Audrey was much too classy to refer to herself in such terms ;)

And last but not least:

 "Monsters don't sleep under your bed.. they sleep inside your head!"
I have no idea where that quote is from- but I love it & have worked it into my last THREE notebooks.

That's all I have for you today. Enjoy your holidays :)

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Journaling Cards

 (an affinity for cutesy rhyming phrases is one of the side effects of having majored in k-12 education lol)

This is one of my favourite ways to make journaling cards & it's super easy.  You just need painter's tape & paper. I used "mixed media" paper for this batch- but I've used card stock & drawing paper before.

My handwriting tends to be pretty small, so I cut my strips of tape into fourths to make more narrow lines.

On some of them I used a white prismacolor to draw little hearts & swirls in the spaces between the lines.

I painted the backgrounds with my watercolours. I like the look of watercolours better but you can also use acrylics.

Once they're dry, I just peel off the tape & ink the edges (I ink the edges of almost everything I make lol. I just think they look more "finished" that way)

I used way too much water on this one so it seeped under the edges of the tape. Luckily I like the messy, paint splattery look ;)

I like these cards because I can use any of my pens-  including ones which wouldn't usually write over painted backgrounds :)

Alice In Wonderland

I'm on another drawing kick, this time it's Alice in Wonderland.

Started off with this little painting for a journal page:

I only meant for the little girl to resemble Alice.. but it made me want to do more that were decidedly Alice in Wonderland..

Alice Stickers

Alice & friends

 The Caterpillar

Curiouser & curiouser..

December

Ah it's December.
Sad to say, December is not one of favourite months..

I know, I know- there's Christmas & ♪♫ the most wonderful time of the year. ♪♫ meh..

Anyways, so no, I'm not making a December Daily. And my December calender is not exactly festive.. >.> but I like it :)

One of the few Christmasy things I DO like is Nightmare Before Christmas (in fact my Christmas stocking has Jack Skellington on it!) :)

So that is the inspiration for my calender this month.

It might not seem like a cheerful page to some people, but it makes me happy :D

I didn't want to ruin the effect with my usual bright calendar stickers.. so I made some special ones just for Dec.

 I'm especially proud of the smiling Jack in the second row.. I think it looks just like him! Not that he's a terribly complicated character to draw but still lol


My calender pages in my last notebook were all boring, half sheet grids stuck in the back of the book.  They were not pretty enough to be included in the journal proper so they were exiled back there >.>

But since I started following The Kathryn Wheel and have been making PRETTY calendar pages for my journal they are not banished to the back anymore.. Which is nice except I kept having to flip thru the pages to find where the calendars were because I can never remember..

So my brillant solution:

Hope everyone enjoys their December!