Dancing Chickens

This is the last page in my current everyday matters journal. I had been saving this picture of the dancing chickens for years. It was just what I needed to accompany this recipe for Parmesan-Seared Chicken. You'll have to try this. It's great!

Going now to my teaching mode...I encourage my journaling students to tie two pages of a spread together. That's what I did when I used the red from the chickens' combs to outline the recipe.

Medicare? Yikes!

Yes, this is a picture of me as an infant. I was a WWII baby and will be 65 in December. How impossible that seems!

The white was written with a Sharpie Poster Paint Pen. I've found they are the most reliable thing out there for writing in white.

Liking Has To Be Earned

I've always loved this quote by Colleen McCullough. It's from her book The First Man in Rome. For several years now, I've felt that my daughter is my best friend, so this page seemed the perfect place to write it.

The inner parts of the flowers are a rubberstamp that I heat embossed with copper, then drew the outer edges with a black pen, and colored the white parts with a Prismcolor pencil.

Spray Paint Stencil

This was my first experiment with making a spraypaint stencil. As you can tell, I didn't quite get the hang of it on this one. Here are some things I learned by trial and error:

1. You can make a stencil by directly cutting from a magazine photo, but it may be easier to see what should be removed by tracing just those parts.

2. You will get a cleaner image by using repositionable spray adhesive on the back of the stencil instead of removable tape.

3. You can use adhesive to stick down any part you accidentally cut off, or to mask an interior part (such as a thin line to demarcate the two lips.)

4. Wear gloves when using spray paint (unless you're into black fingernails.)

Sept. 2-5

This spread was painted with Anita's 'Periwinkle' and 'Melted Butter' acrylics. Just squirted them on and spread with a 1" flat brush. For the date lines, I made a stamp by cutting diamonds out of a craft foam sheet and temporarily mounting them to an acrylic block with Scotch Removable Poster Tape. They were tricky to align just right, so I was sorry to have to remove them from the block. Next time I will adhere them to a piece of acetate and stick that to the acrylic block so they will be easy to remove and reuse.