I am terrible at e-mail. If you've ever written to me you know this to be true. There is just so much of it and sometimes I think about deleting my entire inbox (2,062 unread messages as of this posting) and starting over. That said, my favorite kind of e-mails to read are the generous and heartfelt messages from people I've never met who tell me how much they enjoy reading my blog and seeing my art. Makes me mushy and gushy and giggly and happy every single time. And drives me to keep blogging every day. So in the... Read more →

All it takes is a little scrap of rubber and a few minutes to make a hand carved stamp! This is my most recent creation: And some playful prints: Thanks for stopping by! ---- P.S. And because I always get asked, if you'd like to learn more about stamp carving, try my online class or my book. This is the carving material I use. Have fun! Read more →

I'm a sucker for packaging. I may or may not buy things based on the cuteness of the packaging....I'm just saying! Cuteness is one thing, but usefulness is even more awesome! I recently received some Prismacolor Premier Markers in the coolest case ever! As you can see, there's a handle for easy carrying... ...and then it looks like this when unzipped and opened: But it's this little toggle thing that makes this case wicked cool! You see, if you pull the string and move the toggle along, the case stands up by itself creating a kind of easel of markers!... Read more →

As you know, I can't resist taking selfies every time I'm standing in front of the elevator in my apartment building. I can track my life through these selfies. Almost all of them end up in my Project Life album. Here are my five faves from this month. I love that I can look at them and immediately know what was going on that day. Suitcase and backpack means I must be traveling. The pigtails remind me of the almost all-nighter I pulled before this trip. And no coat means the weather must have been nice! Hmmmm...clearly someone came for... Read more →

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here. All of the previous posts can be found archived here. There is a flickr group for sharing right here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post. Thanks! I don't like to get too comfortable art-wise. It's important for me to... Read more →

I found a little pocket of time for myself this week and worked on painting two canvases. This is the one I'm happier with at the moment. The other needs some more marination time. When I started the canvas it was with the purpose of making the background as important as the face. I recently took a class where the teacher pointed out that I tend to let backgrounds just "be" rather than use them as an integral part of the composition. I'm also continuing to push myself away from "pretty" into interesting. For instance, I know her two eyes... Read more →

I've recently become obsessed with the instagram account "nails2inspire." The owner of the account posts lots of photos of insane nails, like these: They're miniature works of art! I especially love when she (I'm assuming the owner of the account is a woman) posts videos of the nail art being created. I'm fascinated by them, but I don't even own any nail polish other than clear. Then I saw that Anna Bond from the Rifle Paper Company had used a mixture of nail polish and gouache. Brilliant! So, I grabbed some acrylic paint and got to work! I still can't... Read more →

Typepad (the service I use to blog) has been having ongoing issues since Thursday. If you can't see images or leave comments or visit my blog, it's not you. It's Typepad. I will try to keep posting blog posts this week, but access to the "compose" panel of Typepad has been very spotty. Hope to share some crafty goodness with you very soon.... xo Julie Read more →

While filming The Mixed Media Workshop, Jenn Mason shared several projects that involved x's and o's. I kind of became obsessed with the x's. So, I sat down to carve a stamp. Here's a cleaner look at the stamp and the print it makes: One of the things that I love about stamp carving is that there are many different ways to get the same result. After I carved this big stamp, I thought that I might enjoy the flexibility of being able to arrange the x's differently. So I carved a few smaller x stamps. The pain of the... Read more →

Are you ready for a lot of alliteration? Once again, I made Pop Up Place Cards for Passover. You can check out the tutorial for the ones I hand cut last year here. This year I made my life easier and used my ScanNCut to cut them. I went with a Spring theme (after all, Passover is all about Spring) and had 3 little hand drawn daisies popping up from the folded place card. Here's a closer look: I used double sided scrapbook paper so you'd get a pretty view from either angle. Here's the place card in situ: Different... Read more →