a new year

Happy New Year!

I know you've all been there........the desire to make art tugging at you, but life getting a bit too busy and in the way.  Couple that with a muse that just flat disappeared the last few months of last year, and I didn't get much artsy stuff done.

So, that's behind me - new year, new art commitment, new excitement to get back to my art room and get painty hands again.

Starting off the year by working in a round robin project that's been going on for a few months (the only arty thing I've done - so glad I committed to that!)

Established the border first then hunted for the right quote. Though I'm a little rusty on my lettering, it sure is fun to get back in the saddle!

artful alphas

After taking Joanne Sharpe's first Lettering Love class (open forever so I can go back and review the videos whenever...), I signed up for her second class as well - Artful Alphabets.  We'll be learning 25 alphas over 5 weeks....I'm moving a little slowly - I think she's on alpha 10 and I'm only on 5, but I like that I can proceed at my own pace - the videos will always be there.

She starts off very basic (won't bother showing you those) then starts building and encouraging us to show some flair.

The cursive alpha is one that seems to have given others trouble, but since I still use most of the cursive letters in my writing, it wasn't too tough.  The hard part is to connect them all and not lift the pen.  Hmmm

Take our print alpha and fatten one segment, then add doodles - she shows 4 but encourages us to experiment....Here are my trials.

Take your own print and thicken it up.  Then I tried some phrases.

Still need work, but fun so far.....  (I'm sure you can join Joanne's class at any time - she makes each alpha easy with a video and PDF).

I'm sharing this with Artists in Blogland Saturday roundup and also Creative Every Day.  This week I worked on my lettering, on my photography (IA words prompt), my ALAW project using Zentangles, and shared progress in my altered book.  A fun week!

lettering love journal - four pages

Here are the first 4 pages of my lettering love journal - I showed the background pages a week or two ago and have been working on them kind of randomly.  As with most things, I'm finding some pages are more successful than others and I still need practice judging how much space the words are going to take.  Since this is only volume 1, I'll have plenty more opportunities to practice!

The cover - simple and easy.

Inside cover, bright and I chose words to set the tone for the rest of the pages.  As suggested by Joanne I used decorative duck tape to bind the pages - it's the black/white on the right.

Pages 2 and 3 are narrower.....

Oooops - crooked tape below....

And page 4, facing the 'joy' page, is back to the standard width.

Here's an example where I started the letters too big necessitating a crunch adjustment at the end, making the word (reward) hard to read.  Bummer.  I actually liked the way 'reward' was going til it got all crowded!

I'll be back with more pages when they're done - maybe end of the week?