It's time for our October Book Club! Just as a reminder, each month I choose a crafty book from my bookshelf and create something inspired by the book. I hope you'll be inspired to do the same. This month I chose The Art & Elegance of Beadweaving by Carol Wilcox Wells. I also own Carol's first book (and one of my bead bibles): Creative Beadweaving: A Contemporary Guide to Classic Off-Loom Stitches. Without reservation, I highly recommend both books. They are both so well done with excellent instructions and fantastic illustrations. Everything I know about beadweaving I learned from these... Read more →

Today is the eleventh and final Second Floor challenge! Are you ready to take it to the second floor? The challenge this time around is to use all six primary & secondary colors. Whatever that means to you or however it inspires you. The prompt is simply meant to get you started. The level of challenge you aim for is entirely internal and up to you. Click here to see what Nat did. As for me, I brought back an old friend: beading. Beading was one of my very first loves in the crafty world. The first time I stumbled... Read more →

I have long loved snipping words out of book pages to create book page poems like this: It's always fun to see what you can create. However, this time I decided to create poems by redacting a single book page. Much more challenging. Making these is like putting together a puzzle. It's a great brain teaser. Plus, it's a lovely way to stitch together a little fantasy story and get yourself in the right mindset to create some cool art. A creative warm-up of sorts. I think my favorite is the fourth one down, "Love & War." Which one is... Read more →

I have to admit that I was a terrible photo-taker at the Halloween Wedding we went to last night. Some of the costumes were mind-blowingly amazing! People went all out! My favorite was a couple who went as the black and white spies from Spy v. Spy. But did I get a photo? Nope. Too busy having a good time and dancing my you-know-what off! Nonetheless, here are five couples I did manage to snap: There were a lot of store bought costumes, but there were also some wonderful handcrafted wonders. I think that Halloween is a great excuse for... Read more →

I'm really excited to share that I have teamed up with scrapbooking kit club Cocoa Daisy to offer a really cool Art Journal Every Day: December kit!!! Way back during the summer, Christine... ...owner of Cocoa Daisy and single mama to two very helpful boys... ...asked me if I'd put together an art journaling kit and mini class for December. I'm a huge fan of Ali Edwards' December Daily project, and a fan of Cocoa Daisy and Christine, so of course I said yes! I knew I'd have to put my own Julie-spin on things and I figured that the... Read more →

Something my friend Ronda said on Episode 1 of the Adventures in Arting Podcast has stuck with me for the last month or so. She said, "It's self-care, not self-ish." That quote kept rolling around my brain and finally a picture flashed into my mind. That idea became a sketch on a piece of paper and spawned four different paintings. I'm sharing the two I like the best, though neither one is quite right. You can see that I went to town with some silver paint and the "Rain" stencil. I used Tar Gel on the umbrella and, unfortunately, ended... Read more →

I've been meaning to do a shop update with some new Printables for a while now, but there always seemed to be another deadline looming. At long last, I *made* the time and I present you with a bunch of fun new Printables to play with: I've used these new Printables in my Project Life: To create a layout: And in my art journal: I print these bad boys on plain white cardstock and then cut them out. I find that it's nice to have little painted bits ready to go (and when you print them, the paper doesn't curl... Read more →

Last week a woman named Sandy wrote to me and said, "A friend of mine and I are thinking about offering Art Journaling Workshops in our community. Do you have any advice on how to get started?" Since I get variations of this question quite often I thought I'd take some time today to answer it here on the blog. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself why you want to offer classes? Possible answers include: to share my love of art journaling to connect with other art journalers to make money If you're doing it to... Read more →

I'm a Halloween Grinch. I don't generally get much into the Halloween spirit. I'm a total wimp about scary movies. I have no interest in going out to a bar dressed as a slutty bumble bee. I don't have children to go trick-or-treating with, and there's virtually no trick-or-treating in my building. FYI: In Manhattan when you trick-or-treat at a building, you go to the front desk to get a list of apartments accepting trick-or-treaters and then you ride the elevator going to those apartments. We live in an area of Manhattan that doesn't have a lot of kids, so... Read more →

I just ordered a cart full of stuff from Dick Blick. I can't help it. As inevitably happens, I need one thing and then to get the discount or the free shipping I just keep adding stuff. Sigh. Here are five of the things I ordered: source This is Jane Davies fault. She turned me on to the pale colors and neturals in this line of matte acrylics and now I want them all. Plus the black and white are simply must-have staples. (P.S.: matte paint = art journal pages that don't stick together) source I keep hearing about how... Read more →