In Which I Get Glittered and Glued

A couple of months ago I wrote about attending a demonstration on how to start and keep an Art Journal. (You can read about that here.) I was so impressed with presenter April Martin that when the art supply store that hosted the demo added her new workshop to its class schedule I quickly signed up.

For four Tuesday nights a group of us - maybe ten - glued and glittered, pasted and painted, penciled and stenciled, and generally had a grand old time creating our very own journals. 

I do believe all of our inner artists were released!

April provided all sorts of ideas and instructions on different ways to prepare our blank pages and then ideas on how to fill them.

I am not very fearless when it comes to this but as the classes went on I got a little freer and more experimental. Mostly I played with different supplies and colors - watercolor and acrylic paints and all sorts of products I had no idea even existed - to prepare my journal's background pages. 

Here are two samples of prepped pages:

And here is a sample of a page with added images:

The background on this page is simply a torn up small brown paper bag that a few of the art supplies I purchased came in. 

I cut the images out of sheets of decorative papers that are available at craft and art supply stores. Someone else has done a lot of the work for me! I just need to know how to wield a pair of scissors...

The process is to keep layering images and words and colors to give the whole page a distressed look and express some sort of feeling. I am not that great with the feeling part so I decided to create a page based on a writing theme.

I started with this...more decorative papers:

 Then....

....I found the bookmark in my stash - it came with the book The Typewriter Girl. I pulled Snoopy at his typewriter and the other artwork from various sources. You can't tell from the photo but the background is a golden yellow.

Right now I am just playing around with layout and I will probably add some more layers although I am just not sure how to do that without cluttering up the page too much. 

I like the idea of using bookmarks on my art journal pages. I have some colorful ones from the many bookstores I have visited and it seems like a good way to preserve them. For some reason they rarely actually end up marking my place in a book.

How to Become an Expert in Type-writing

Typewriter 1886-1890 Manufactured by Standard Typewriter Mfg. Co, Ilion, New York Remington Standard Typewriter #2 Metal, wood, textile. H 29, W 30, D 39 cm

I am not sure what to read next. Most likely I will re-read Essays of Elia in keeping with my British theme. I also have a reader's copy of the novel The Typewriter Girl by Alison Atlee. It takes place in Victorian England. I have read 35 pages and so far the best bits are the quotes from How to Become an Expert in Type-writing that introduce each chapter. That is a real book. I found it on Google Books. It was written in 1890 by Mrs. Arthur J. Barnes. Here is some of Mrs. Barnes's advice just in case those of you who learned to type on a typewriter have forgotten:

It is very important that you should learn the key-board so thoroughly that you can see it with your eyes shut, and can strike each letter without the least hesitation.

Observe the bell. The bell rings to warn the writer that he (sic) is approaching the end of the line.

And best of all, concerning typewriting and life in particular:

If you form a careless habit in the beginning, you will probably always keep it.

The story concerns one Betsey Dobson who is a London typewriter girl and works for an insurance company. But she is destined for better things...she hopes...and takes a job at a seaside resort. There is most likely both romance and trouble in store for Miss Betsey.

I can't help thinking of Mma Grace Makutsi of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency who graduated from the Botswana College of Business and Secretarial School with the highest ever mark: 97 percent. I am sure she would approve of Mrs. Barnes and her thoughts on typewriting.