My first couple days

Hello peoples!! I have made it safe and sound to Mauritius.  Yes it is as beautiful as it looks online, yes it is hot, and yes jet lag as real and strong force in my life right now.  So most of you know that I am a very timely person, I am always checking my watch and using the time of day to decide if it is the proper time to eat, sleep, wake up, sometimes even pee.  But right now my brain is all confused and it was especially bad on the all the flights because over the course of about 30ish hours we flew threw two sunsets and two sunrises wha!? My meals consisted of whatever random snacks Mom sent with me THANK YOU MOTHER! and plane food.  I had previously heard that plane food was the worst but I don't have a very refined palette, I mean I like McDonalds chicken nuggets, and freezer meals.  So I was thinking that it would be ya know like not that bad I might even enjoy it, but I did not know that food could taste that bad.  Some things I was eating for a while before I realized what they were trying to make,  Anywho my brain is all askew and every one of the three flights I got a window seat WOO!  But having a window seat and getting up and out of your seat is difficult because you have to get the attention of the person sitting beside you, none of them spoke English as their first language and get them to step out into the tini tiny aisle then you have to get into the tini tiny aisle to walk into the tini tiny bathroom then you do it again to get back into your seat.  I LOVED getting to look out the window and look down on the clouds AH YES!  That was just wonderful.  Sleeping on a plane is not super easy so since I woke up Saturday at six am I haven't slept more than six hours and those are like thirty minutes here and there so my brain is just failing me right now.  It is only 1:00pm here and I am trying to stay up until at least 8:00 tonight so I can start getting into a regular sleep schedule.  The weather here right now is warm but there is a breeze and humid and we just had an afternoon rain, so basically perfect sleeping weather.  The house is really quite right now except for the fans blowing the air around, and the bird chirping noises coming through the windows.  Everything is so green and beautiful here, when I get up the energy to walk over to my window I will take a picture of the beauty around me, but don't expect that to happen for a couple days ;).
Even though I have only been out of America for a little while I have already noticed that Americans are just really loud.  In all of the American airports I was in everyone was talking and there was just noise everywhere, in the Paris and Mauritian airport there was close to the same number of people and it was just SUPER quite.  It was kind of unnerving I personally like my loud peoples.
 On the first flight that was only two hours long I was sitting in front of a thirty something guy and a sixty something guy that had just met each  other.  The thrity something guy talked like a sailor, not that I have met a lot of saliors but how I imagine a sailor would talk, he used cuss words all the time but not in a "watch me be dirty" way but that was just the way he talked.  He was a loud talker (yah Americans!) and he and the old guy talked the whole time and I got to eavesdrop and imagine what it would be like if I had the nerve to just start talking to a stranger and find things to say for two hours straight.
The next flight was eight hours and I set next to a French lady, we didn't talk like at all but when they brought out breakfast they handed us this warm thing in a plastic package and we kind of looked at each other like "what the heck is this supposed to be?" neither one of us ate it but I think it was supposed to be some sort of egg sandwich but it was THIN and very sad looking.  That flight I tried not to go to sleep so I could adjust myself to Mauritian time.  So I watched a couple movies and stared out the window :D
The last flight was eleven hours.  I set near a nice French man but we didn't talk much either except funny story- I was sitting there minding my own buisness when he reaches her trys to offer my some sort of oil in a dropper kind of thing.  I had no idea what it was and said no, he tried to show me the box to show what it was supposed to do but it was in french so I had no clue.  Turns out it was one of those things you stick up your nostril and breath it in to clear your sinuses, so either he was just wierdly kind or I was sniffing too much and it was driving him crazy... who knows.  That flight had movies as well but you needed a special kind of headphone to use them and I didn't realize until an hour before the end of the flight that the headphones were in the back of the seat in front of me.  So that flight I tried to sleep, finished my book (it had a pooy ending), listened to a book on tape, listened to music, read about what each movie was about, ate weird undistinguished food, and watched other peoples movie screens and made up the monologue in my head (I actually did this a whole movie before I realized that I should move on.)
So now I am here on this beautiful island! Trying to stay awake in prime sleeping weather.  

Art Journal Page #6

This is my latest art journal page.  I have seen a couple pages where they put a couple different scraps of things on the page to give it texture then painted over it so I decided that I wanted to give it a try :D.  It was super easy but I wish I would have spent more time finding things to put on there, I have seen people using puzzle pieces, doodles done with hot glue, cut outs from card stock, that sort of thing.  I just grabbed a few different things and slapped them on there with a TON of Mod Podge to hold it all on there.  I should have probably used a different kind of glue but after a ton of layers it seemed to hold everything down really well.  I have a piece of lace, a couple different textures of string, a button, some scraps of paper, some tulle, some rick rack, and some wire that I folded into a heart shape.  After I had it all put down I squirted blue all over the paint and used a small foam roller to spread it around.  When the blue had dried I put a few squirts of the yellow on the page and spread it out with the foam roller.   I put this quote on there just using a paint brush, my horrible handwriting, and a little black acrylic paint.  Overall I think this page turned out pretty good for my first attempt at this sort of look, I love the idea, the colors, and the quote but next time I will put a little more time and effort into what things I put down and where I put them.     

Art Journal Page #5

On this page I wanted to include some snippets of things I have gone to and done so far this December. The page I had originally started on this page no matter what I did just kept looking weirder and cheesier.  After a full two hours of trying I just covered the whole thing in duct tape and tried again :D.  The paint pealed off of the duct tape a little in one part put I heavily Mod Podged it and it hasn't pealed any more since that one spot.  

So to create the background on this page I took a berry red color, a light grey/green and an off white then I used a credit card to blend the colors around.  After that dried I used a light blue and a sponge brush and splotchy smeared it onto the page.  Then I arranged the  pieces that I had cut out across the page and used Mod Podge to attach them all.  

This Willy Wonka ticket was cut out from my ticket to the musical that my friend was in, I also cut her name out of the program and put it next to the cut out.  The DEC and 2014 are also from the program,  

The "Holiday Windows" thing is from an intermediate school performance that two of the kids I babysit were in and I went to watch them.  I wrote their names out on some blue paper and put them next to it.  

The penguin and snowmen are from one of the days of my daily calender and I just cut them out of their backgrounds to put on here.  The big black DEC was just a random scrap that I found laying around and I painted it black.  Over all it is not one of my favorite pages but it is not horrible either :).  

Art Journal Page #4

Here is my newest page!  Even though I don't feel like the whole page is that awesome all together the background was really fun and kind of just happened by accident.  First I had these neon food colors that I wanted to try using.  

First I put a few layers of paper towels down and sprayed them with water.  

 

 Then I used the food coloring and just dropped it randomly all over the wet paper towels

Then I rolled the paper towels up and squeezed them a little to spread the color out through all the paper towels. 

After I unrolled the paper towels and took them apart they looked like this, kind of tie died and splotchy.  I saved these and will probably use them in another page.   

 I spread Mod Podge all over the page and stuck pieces of the paper towels all over it.  When I peeled it off it left this cool pattern of awesome color.  I did this quite a few times to make layers of color and until it looked like enough color.  I also sprayed the paper towels in between to keep them moist and leave color onto the page.

This is the final result.  

 It was really easy and looks so cool.  You could also do it with just one color or just a few to make it more specific to a color scheme

I added the things I'd rather be doing over the top which I love that idea but I don't really like to colors I used for paper underneath the words 

Art Journal Page #3

This is my third page and so far it is my favorite!  I wanted to do a page and use my stencils and also not have any quotes since my other pages have quotes on them, I also wanted to use my washable crayons and really put them to the test :).   

First I sprayed the page with a little bit of water and used four different colored crayons for each page and did a kind of fade with the colors. Then I sprayed it with more water and lightly used a brush to blend the colors.  The crayons had a cool effect and once they dried weren't smudged by Mod Podge which is something that I had trouble with watercolors doing. But since they are washable if you smudge them too much they will pretty much smudge away to nothingness so when you add the water smudge just a little tiny bit then move on.  If you aren't happy with it though you can completely remove the color from the page and try again.     

Then I used some Gesso, my circle stencil, and a sponge brush to randomly add the dots.  I wasn't really too careful about making the neat and I just did them in random spots on the page.   

 For the circle parts of the tree I used my Mod Podge lid and the lid of a mason jar to draw out the circle shapes on some book paper from another book.  Then I cut them out and used two colors of oil pastels for each circle, I colored the lighter color further into the circle then the darker color on the edge and used my finger to smear the color towards the center.  Then I put them onto the page using Mod Podge.

I used black acrylic paint to draw the trunk part of the tree, and even unartistic little ol' me was able to do these and make them look half decent.  So if you want to try painting the page is a good thing to try if you aren't very artistic because it is very simple things but you are still using a paint brush and paint.

I used white acrylic paint on a big, stiff, round brush and kind of dabbed it on for the clouds 

For the grass I used two different brushes and two colors of green and a white ( mixed with one of the greens) and just filled it in with simple downward strokes until I felt like I had enough.  

So there is this page!  It was fun and simple, I wish it had a little more texture but oh well at least it has quite a few layers of things going on.  

Art Journal Page- #2

This is the second page that I have done and so far my least favorite... I had grand ideas and it just turned out very blah, but I figured I would show y'all anyway.   

First I mixed a little dark blue watercolor paint with some black to make it even darker and painted the whole page with that. I used oil pastels to draw the snow man, first of all I am horrible at drawing and the snowman kind of ruined the page in my opinion.  I used water color paper and put some white, yellow, green, and a tiny bit of blue then used a credit card to smear the colors together and cut out the moon shape. 

 I used water color paper and put some white, yellow, green, and a tiny bit of blue then used a credit card to smear the colors together and cut out the moon shape. 

I used watercolor paper and oil pastels to try and do some snowish colors then I used my finger to smear it around and used Mod Podge to paste it onto the page.  

I also used water color paper and reds and a white and a credit card to smear it, then I cut out all the letters.  I think the letters turned out really cute.  I am very happy with them, even though it took a long time to cut out each letter.  I also used some white paint to do little snowflake ish things.  It was all going ok except for the snowman until I tried to put mod podge over the whole thing because I used so much thick paper.  I tried to put the Mod Podge on thick and just kind of dab it on but I still ended up smearing a TON of the paint as you can see in the picture.  So it all kind of looks gloopy and smeared.  Oh well, now I know that they paint I used does not work well with Mod Podge and also to try and use thinner paper whenever I can so I don't have to use as much glue.  

  

First Journal Page!

I just found my camera today, I have already done a couple pages in my journal but I thought it would be lame to talk about them without pictures so here is the first page!  

In the future I am going to take pictures as I go but as I didn't know where my camera was and I still wanted to work on it I decided to just go for it.  

This first page I used soft pastels in the background, I used a redish pink color, an orange, and a yellow.  I put the pink on the outside then colored with the orange then the yellow then I took a spray bottle of water and misted the colors and used a paint brush and my fingers to blend all the colors together.  I also took the pink and ran it more concentrated on the edges of the page.  

Then I took a stencil that I had and traced the outline of this flower thing with a black sharpie then using watercolors I filled in the flowers not really being super careful to fill in all the way up to the lines or to stay in the lines for a softer more loosey-goosey  look :).   

For the words I took some watercolor paper and put some squirts of my water colors in a few different colors all over it and then I misted it with some water and used an old credit card to smear the colors together then I wrote the words out using the Bic pens (which actually worked really well) and cut out the little tiles. I used Mod Podge to glue them down then used Mod Podge over the whole page because it felt a little chalky because of the pastels.  

Overall I am really happy with this page!  I love the colors a lot and it turned out pretty good for my first attempt.  Of course there are a few things I am not a fan of, the biggest thing is that I used green for the word tiles.  Now that I am looking at it I wish I would have used blue or purple the green blends in a little too much with the green "petals"  of the flower in the background so the saying does not really stand out a ton. I still love it and think it is super cute though, just something to remember for future pages- try to think about what is the background and what is the foreground and try to make a noticeable contrast between the two.