Christmas is creeping up on me at a terrible speed. I find little time for blog surfing, and for posting, so my newest collages will be my Christmas greeting to you: What ever you celebrate, have a wonderfull time and a Happy New Year too! Thank you for visiting and come back in the new year, I do love visitors!
Thank you
for a very unique experience at Journalfest in October.
What a
beautiful setting
To a newbie
like myself, this was pretty overwhelming!
But I let
myself be swept away by the wonderful, creative crowd of people you two
attract.
The meals
were events in themselves. Not only were they tasty and healthy, but also gave
us the occasion to make new friends, to chat, and to trade.
I came to
see Journalfest as a magic place where creative souls meet in a protected
environment to learn, to exchange, to experiment, and to make new connections.
Each of us
returns with more than the sum of Journalfest because our experiences from it
allow us to grow.
I had Dan
Essig in my first class. In the photo below Dan is in the foreground demonstrating a technique.
I was
impressed with how well prepared he was, and how smoothly he guided us all
through the day. It was so very satisfying to have created a small, beautiful,
original, and fun journal at the end of class!
Dan had already taken
the trouble of preparing paper for the pages, to cut the covers to size and
even providing us with the right size ephemera to use, so all we had to do was
concentrate on sewing, gluing, and learning the steps for the intricate covers.
They look hard to do, but step by step, they are not hard to make. Thanks Dan! (I will show a picture of my journal in a later post)
Dan came
across as a serious handcrafts man, who really knows the ins and outs of his
trade!
A very fine class!
And I got to meet Judy (at the right in the photo below, wearing a white T-shirt .) We had been exchanging security envelopes, but I only ever met her online. Great to share two classes with you, Judy!
Theo Ellsworth was my teacher
on the second day. In the picture above, you see Theo with a beard at the back.
I don’t
know why, but I had pictured Theo as an older guy… but Theo must be about 35!
Sorry, Theo! Maybe you are an old soul? ;)
On a
personal level I was impressed by Theo. His quiet way may mislead you to think
him shy, but boy, does he come across when you listen to him a little while!
Theo
changed our classroom into a magic bubble, a place to feel safe, and I was
confident that whatever came out of my pen would be just fine! (In other words,
the inner critic got left outside, on the doorstep.)
With fun
little games and warm-up exercises Theo gave us the possibility to access our
own private creative level, and to communicate with our creative selves.
I was
impressed with how well Theo tackled logic questions to a non-logic process!
After the
class he gave us a small zine with “homework” – and a diploma! All in his
playful style, with wonderful magical creatures. YAY!
This was a
much needed quiet interlude in the middle of the high energies of Journalfest!
Thank you so much Theo!
For someone
not already familiar with L.K. Ludwig’s working methods, I warmly recommend her
class!
She
generously shares her techniques. She provides little chocolates. She is
experimenting and there is no stopping her ever new creative ventures!
I had done
quite a bit of preparation for her class, which also had an extensive list of
tools and art materials to bring. Unfortunately I already had some experience
with most of the techniques she showed. And I had hoped for a bit more in dept
discussion of journaling methods, the writing, and the processing of thoughts…
But maybe I had not read the class instructions closely enough…
Thank you all the same, L.K. I heard quite a bit of whooping and excited cries around me, so I know you gave others a great experience!
The evenings were a chapter apart!
Having fun with Lisa.
Every night
had new features and fun events. It was great to meet people, and to share
stories. I loved the live band (“Surrealized")
hired for our Journaling party. And the great door prices on the last evening. Not
to forget all the little bits and pieces for journaling and otherwise, that we
were gifted with throughout the fest.
With a
lingering jetlag and a cold, I was pretty wasted at nine, but off course, the
party continued in the dorm! I hung in there for as long as I could. Then I put
in some ear plugs. And put on layers of clothes to sleep in. (my room was
freezing, but dear Doris Arndt from across the hall got me an extra blanket
from her car. Thank you
Here is my JournalFest friend Wendy! So glad to have met her!
Journalfest
was a wonderful experience for me!
I cherish
the new friends I made. And I hope to get a chance to reconnect with people I
met briefly, but who left a lasting impression.
And I hope
– I really, really hope – to get the chance of being a part of Journalfest in
the future!
Cheers to
you, Tracey and Teesha, for giving us the opportunity to meet, to learn, and to
grow. What you do is truly unique and beautiful!
The last morning we were freezing outside for a while, before the doors were opened for breakfast. We had a glorious sunrise and entering the hall, classical music was playing. Do I have to tell you I was sad to leave?
I have more pictures to show. I will try to post them before Christmas! (I am a slow blogger, but I try to give my posts quality.)
I am resurfacing.
I got back from my travels two weeks ago, but I had this bugging cold - not the swine flu - just a cold, that kept me company for a month now, and tapped my energy. This made jetlag even harder to get over. So I have neglected blogging, and e-mailing, and I have a lot of catching up to do. Enough on this subject! Here goes:
I started my travels with a short visit in Tsawwassen, south of Vancouver. My aunt and uncle were in the middle of packing to move house, but they took the time out to go with me to a beautiful bird sanctuary not far from Tsawwassen. We had an absolutely gorgeous day!
I had heard about the colours of fall in Canada. And - WOW! Reds, yellows, golden browns... I will show more pictures in future posts.
In the coming days I will tell about Journalfest, which was my second leg on the travel.
There is something about withering flowers I can't resist - what is it, though?...
The colours? Yes! Absolutely, but there is something else...
A melancholy about another summer gone by, perhaps?
But also the beauty of the cycle of life.
Maybe you can tell me?
The last few glimpses of my mothers summer garden, before autumn seriously sets in.
So, I cheated a bit - these are samples from the butterfly photo - but also from the previous photo. Chance had the last layer peeping through and I liked it that way.
Bee good!
I am a proud observer of nature. Proud as in I often notice little things and point them out to my fellow observers...
Well, so much for pride... this time nature tricked me!
I thought I was taking a photo of spiders web in a cracked stone wall.
Imagine my surprise, when I viewed my photos on the PC, and discovered the black and white camouflaged moth!
See it? In the right hand side of the photo. I was thrilled, it felt like a gift!
[I have a request to point out the moth - apparently, I am not the only one it was hiding for! ;) ]
And I was somewhat humbled and thought: There is always more to see, more to learn, more to embrace. I appreciate that lesson!
I love to take a walk along the wine on our local sunny hill. There is a small wineyard, making the most exquisite white wine. I am sure the wineberg snail would taste delicious with the Durlacher wine, if that is the kind of thing you like to eat! I prefer to admire their beautiful colours.
[OK - this is not the kind of wineberg snail you would normally eat, it is really tiny, probably not worth the trouble!]
This picture was taken with the Panasonic DMC FZ18 , which can go up very close ... Sometimes I nudge the very thing I want to make a photo of with the lense, before I am happy. Hurrah for modern technology, it enables me to see things I would not percieve otherwise... especially after I started carrying a pair of reading glasses in my purse... which I occasionally need, but often refuse to use...
The most simple picture might hold a million colours... at least if you sample it in Photoshop ;)
[Do check out my other posts on the subject, I am doing a series of "Colours of Nature" posts]
Can you believe these colours?
We may not percieve all the colours of nature when we look. They merge to a harmonious whole.
These are the colours of a simple lettuce - or should I say a sample of colours, there are more.
I am training myself to become a better (amateur) photographer.
I got myself a little Panasonic Digitalkamera DMC-TZ 7 which I carry everywhere. It's a point and shoot, but a nice one. It is small and light enough, that I WILL take it with me. No more thinking: "OH, I wish I had a camera right now!" - I have! It also enables me to train my eye on a daily basis.
To learn more about photography, I signed up for a class in october. I will be carrying our trusty Panasonic DMC FZ18 , and learn to use more of it's many features, and get the grips properly on the manual functions.
For inspiration, I like to visit a couple of great photo blogs:
shuttersisters and thepioneerwoman
but there are lots of fantastic photography out there, just look at flickr!
[Do check out my other posts on the subject, I am doing a series of "Colours of Nature" posts]
So many thoughts of change are coming up in this house, that I have started a journal to keep track of them. Untill now, I only kept a studio log. The more personal journals I kept years ago, were mostly in written form. I found it difficult to keep an artists journal, where I explored my feelings and thoughts visually. But it seems to be working for me now!
I like to cut words from a newspaper as the occasional prompt for my journaling.
And as you can see, I love layering.
My techniques vary from monoprint, to nature print, to stamping, to drawing, and collaging and mostly in combination.
