Joanne Sharpe's Online Class Bloomin' Doodles

I enjoyed Joanne Sharpe's in person classes so much a couple of weeks ago (you can read more about the classes I took from her here) that I signed up for her online class, Bloomin' Doodles. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but between this class, another of Joanne's classes called Artfully Inspired Life 2015, and Laure Ferlita's Imaginary Trip to New Zealand, my Documented Life Project challenge seems to have gone by the wayside. I may get back to it eventually, but then again, I may not. I'm not going to stress about it either way.

Joanne is teaching us how to turn flowers into fun, funky doodles. Here is one of my pages as an example. This is before the addition of color; it's even better once the color is added.

Joanne recommends using an inexpensive composition book to paste inspiration photos into. I'm not too fond of composition books, so I made a book instead. I used inexpensive mixed media paper for the pages and scraps of mat board and chipboard that I had on hand for the covers. I bound it with my Bind-It-All and decorated the front cover with gelli printed papers. Here is the cover of my book.

In Person Classes with Joanne Sharpe

Joanne Sharpe came to My Heart's Fancy in Edmond, Oklahoma, recently and taught 3 classes. I was able to take all 3 classes, and what fun that was! She taught Artful Alphabet Soup; Sketch, Paint, and Doodle Stitch; and Pockets Full of Posies. I enjoyed all 3 classes and really expected to like the second one best, since we were painting on fabric. I did like that class a lot, but I actually liked the Pockets Full of Posies the best. We made little flower paintings and then cut them up to fit into 4"X4" or 2"X2" vinyl pocket pages (the kind used by scrapbookers for photos, journaling, and/or decorations). Here are 6 pages that I did in class (they are all 4"X4" in size).

I enjoyed it so much that I cut up more pages from paintings I had done previously, mostly in other classes. And I bought more vinyl pages with more sizes to do more in the future.

The Wheel Spins (The Lady Vanishes) by Ethel Lina White

This book was recommended to me by a good friend. It was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1938; the book's original title was The Wheel Spins, while the movie title is The Lady Vanishes. I enjoyed the book and plan to see the movie soon; it is available to stream on Netflix. It is the story of Iris Carr, who befriends Miss Froy during a train trip. When Iris awakens after a nap, Miss Froy has disappeared, and no one else on the train admits to ever having seen her. This is my Forgotten Classic for the Back to the Classics reading challenge. I rate it 4 out of 5.

Documented Life Project - Weeks 10 & 11

March Theme
Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)
March 7
Art Challenge:  As A Layer Element
Journal Prompt:  Surviving the Elements

I was actually able to finish TWO page spreads yesterday, because I had forgotten that I had worked on a background several weeks ago that was almost done. All I had to do to complete it was to add a few more marks and figure out a focal point. An advertisement in a magazine provided what I was looking for.

March Theme
Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)
March 14
Art Challenge:  Borders
Journal Prompt:  "Borderline feels like I'm going to lose my mind."

One of the nice things about an acrylic paint background is that if you don't like it you can always cover it up. This page started with dark red and blue paints that were applied with an old credit card; it was very dark and quite ugly. I decided to cover it with gesso, which ended up covering more than I intended. I applied the yellows and pinks with a brush and a brayer. I added marks, the images from a catalog, the writing and the borders and am quite satisfied with the result. The borders are from a couple of sheets that I gelli printed, tore down to size and sewed together on my sewing machine.

Update on Challenges

I am participating in two challenges this year:  the Back to the Classics reading challenge, and the Documented Life Project (an art journaling challenge).

I'm doing well with my reading challenge; today, I finished my 7th of 12 books. I'm feeling really good about this challenge, both because I'm on schedule and because I'm reading books I'm enjoying.

The Documented Life Project, however, not so much. I completed 8 out of the first 9 challenges, but since we're up to challenge number 22 this week, you can see that I'm really far behind.

This is what I wrote on my blog when I decided to participate in the challenge:  "I probably won't be able to participate every week because I'll be doing some traveling this year.  I imagine that other things will probably get in the way as well, but I plan to do what I can."

I really thought I would be further along than this by now. Oh well, I'm not giving up; I'm going to try to work on a page spread today.