OH OH STITCHER: Art Journals and Snow

Well, you can tell its been a while since I've posted! I went to add photos first before writing anything and ended up posting them with no comments! Wow!!! I guess its been more than a little while!

Well, the above photo shows how much snow we had about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks ago so my excuse for not posting here is that perhaps I have been in a very deep depression over the humungous amount of snow we have received this winter!!! We had over 6 to 8 feet in the backyard! Please take note of the tree branch in the above photo that is directly to the right of my husband Kevin and our dog Skyler. There is about 5 feet or more of snow on the ground right there!

Here is a photo of that same area taken about 30 minutes ago, on Mar. 20. Still alot of snow, but at least there is some bare ground showing and there is an end in sight to this horrible snowy winter!

I have been doing alot of stitching and of course have no photos of any of it. I am currently working on Quaker Diamonds by Rosewood Manor. One thing I did that excites me to no end is, I enrolled in my very first online course with Sharon B and what a wonderful thing to do! The course is called "Studio Journals" and it is amazing! I am a few weeks behind as a family emergency came up that called me away for quite a few weeks but I have jumped in today and am ready to roll!!!

I have never ever done a journal or scrapbooking or anything similar in my life. I found out about a certain book about 15 years ago that dealt with painting and decorating journal pages and was excited enough to search for years to find that book. Then along came Sharon B's website. I am totally in awe of her stitching and the information she provides on her web site. I consider her samples to be works of art!

I have been in art stores over the years and I'm sure I have a life time supply of journals in various sizes and forms lying around but have always been a bit leary of jumping in to use any of them, thinking that when I got "good enough" to put something into a journal, I would. But, reading Sharon's class notes I discovered that if I never start a journal, I will never learn, I won't get to where I want to go. My ideas will stay jumbled in my head with no where to go and no way to get to where I want them to go.

I love nature and trees and I love taking photographs. To attest to that, I have 2 - 500 gig hard drives on which I store and backup my photographs, so yes, I love taking photographs.

Anyways, this is the introductory page to my very first journal ever! I have a dream to take my photographs further and do art quilts with them, or wall hangings, or something. I just feel there is something in me that needs to do something with what I see in my photographs. The sunrise is the light shining on a new adventure, art journalling!

I can very easily get caught up in the details and so when I printed off my "I have a dream" saying for the first page, I carefully took my scissors and cut out the word "DREAM". I then thought to myself that "enough of this crap", and ripped the rest of the words out. I had alot of fun doing my first few pages!

I have always loved trees and taking photographs of trees. As well, I love the play of light and dark, especially in the winter when the shadows are that wonderful shade of blue. So, the very first photos I chose for my art journal are of trees and nature and the play of shadow and light. These are what I think about when I think of making an art quilt and so I needed to get them into the journal. I will do the exercises in the class notes from Sharon though, to make sure I learn everything I need to to get to where I want to be!