in progress

My first attempt to draw a mandala and it turned out okay.I wanted it to be fun so I wasn't very ridget with the measurements and I couldn't find my compass so I traced around everyday items in my apartment. I still need to play with the colors a bit but it was a fun exercise.  I didn't preplan the design I just knew that I wanted to use yellow and then orange and I changed my mind about the orange and went for brown, sage green then blue.  I tend to work really light in the beginning and then I went back 3 or 4 times and recolored in sections to make it more vibrant.  

I hit the jackpot this week with roses. Every yard has a giant blooming crop and our local garden in the park which is run entirely by volunteers is amazing. One of the volunteers was nice enough to give me a rose. I think you can see 155 different roses in this one spot on the outskirts of Balboa Park and so many of them smell amazing this time of year.

Enjoying the Rose Garden in full bloom.

The Nomad Journal

 I saw this fabric (fake leather) as a swatch and fell in love with this soft polyester.   I was lucky enough to find it by the yard at our local upholstery fabric store. The inside feels like black fleece which would have been fine but fleece tends to pick up dog hair and string so I placed a lining fabric inside.  I used pellon to make it less floppy but I would switch to interfacing to bind the lining fabric in the future.  It's really tough to seal down all the edges even with careful gluing.   The gluing of the lining made the outside fabric wrinkle a bit but I'm pretending it adds character.  All of the charms were from a drawer I needed to clean out. A old watch, cell phone charm (lazy panda) and a trade charm with the number 2. All and all it is nice and lightweight and inexpensive to make because I only bought the outside fabric. 

 Everything in this journal will be related to some sort of travel.  I've seen so many painted suitcases lately that I knew they would play well in this journal.  I'm also having a circus and rose moment so these themes will pop up as well. 

The mask is 3-D and fits perfectly over the face but I decided I really liked the eye and made it cover the rest of the face. Materials- old dictionary pages, pen, pencil, waxed linen, watercolors and paper.