sey061

Yesterday I pulled out my 1967 almost mint condition Spirograph and sat down to play. I bought this little gem on eBay a few years ago because it was one of my most favorite things to do when I was growing up. I was looking forward to revisiting this old friend since I was certain that as an adult I would be able to eliminate some of the things that frustrated me about it as a child. As I prepared my work surface I remembered how my uncoordinated child fingers always had trouble coaxing the little map pins out of their container. I discovered that my arthritic adult fingers have the same problem. As I pinned my ring in place on the official Spirograph corrugated cardboard work surface, I had trouble identifying the holes in the ring that were meant for the pins. There are 4 of them and they're smaller than the other holes, which I still don't know the purpose of. Later I was reminded that it doesn't really matter which holes you stick the map pins into. They will eventually...

Today I am commonplacing in my first visual zibaldone ....and trying to define exactly what that means as I go. Since a zibaldone is such an obscure type of book and by definition it means hodgepodge, I feel like it's okay to just make stuff up. Therefore, my zibaldone will be similar to my Journaling By 5s journal but without the limitations. I will work on the book as a whole instead of going page by page as in traditional art journaling. I will limit myself to about 20 pages since working on any more than that can get overwhelming or tedious. I will loosely follow the JB5 sessions and media recommendations but in no particular order and with more substitutions and repeats. Some of the JB5 principles that I will continue to follow are that I only use things I have on hand. I will not buy and kind of media or embellishment specifically for my visual zibaldone. That doesn't mean I'm on a spending freeze. I'm a very thrifty shopper anyway but I will occasionally pick u...

I've decided I don't like the words 'art journal' anymore. Art journals have expectations. They want you to fill them with beautiful works of art. Sometimes I'm okay with that but sometimes I'm not. 'Sketchbook' doesn't work for me because I don't sketch. I don't do 'scrapbooking' because all those pictures of my family just got in the way of what I was trying to create.   'Notebook' isn't the word I want either. Those have lines in them and want you to write important stuff on their pages. I think Strathmore made a wise marketing decision with their ' Visual Journals '. That phrase doesn't have the same expectations as 'art journal' or 'sketchbook. I can glue a picture of a dog wearing dentures into a visual journal. But I'm still bothered by the 'journal' part of it. That word makes me think of a diary...a written account of thoughts, events, plans, dreams, etc. I journal on occasion b...