HABIT-FORMING JOURNALS

Have any of you heard of this guy -- the one who started illustrating the hilarious things that kept popping out of his little girl's mouth? Well, one thing we really regret is not jotting down more of the funny, shocking, heartwearming things our own kids said and did when they were small. You feel sure you will remember them all but, surprise, you don't! Now that Little Goober is starting to talk, Papa John wants to make sure our kids don't make the same mistake we did. He went on line to see if he could find some kind of journal for them to keep a record of those special moments in and, par for the course, ended up ordering three! Two of them actually made it to their house.

One, however, never made it any further than the little side-table in my cozy dining porch nest, where I watch the sun come up each morning.

You see, one thing I have never been able to do is form any sort of art habit. I'll get totally immersed in one project for a while, but then I might go days, weeks, sometimes even months, without picking up pencil or brush. What I really want is a daily habit. It doesn't have to be a whole project per day, maybe just a little sketch or something. I was thinking about signing up for a class called 365, but when I read the blurb on the back of this book, I knew I was holding the perfect solution there in my hands.

In fact, it reminded me a lot of those super-fun exercises we did in my illustration class, with Becky Dawson of One Lane Road, at art camp this fall -- the ones that had us laughing so hard we almost wet our pants!

So far, so good!

P.S. Speaking of Becky Dawson, did I ever tell you that I finally received my Lucky Star coffee mug she designed? You saw it in the last post, about my "Seasonality Cafe" brain fart. Picture me this morning, sitting in my cozy nest, sipping tea from that mug, watching the sun come up, and sketching in my new little journal. Does it get any better?
 

IF YOU HAD A SHOP...

I was doing a final flip-through of last summer's issue of Artful Blogging (sister publication to my favorite Stampington magazine, Art Journaling) when I came to an article by this lady, which I had dog-eared first time around.

In it, she was describing the process she went through when first envisioning her blog-to-be. She happens to design "modern crochet patterns for old-fashioned crafters", and said she found it helpful to play "Shop Girl", and to pretend she was opening her own little boutique rather than starting a blog. So she asked herself why she wanted this little shop, what types of products would she offer, who her customers might be, and how she would draw them in. Then she envisioned how her shop would actually look.

Know what? It got me to thinkin'. A lot. I finally came to the conclusion that my dream blog-shop wasn't really a shop at all. It was more of a café -- one where I'd meet up with my internet muses on a regular basis, in order to inspire and be inspired, to nourish our creativity, to share our explorations, and to support one another's endeavors -- much like the one where I meet up with my local muses every week, for all the same reasons.

And, the more I thought about my little café and its customers, the more I came to realize that, perhaps, it is time to give these premises a mini-makeover, maybe even tweak the name a bit.  Still thinkin'.

So, what about you? Who among you has never, ever dreamed about having a little shop of your own? What would it look like? What kind of merchandise would it carry? Who would shop there? Go ahead, dream a little!