Q&A: it's all about the paper, and other stories...

A quick Q&A post I filmed on my little flash camera as I waited for the footage for tomorrow's tutorial video (part 2!) to convert. GAH! It takes forever sometimes, so I thought I'd film this!

Happy, Smashing Discoveries

Week two of the Smash book. Roughly. I cheated and chose two photos from the 14th, which means this is four days' worth of journaling. Or photoing? Is there a word for this? 

A few happy discoveries:

1. I already have a perfect stamp for this -- that written 'date' is from my line at Paperbag Studios.
2. The itty-bitty cloud punch I got for $1.25 at Tuesday Morning makes the cutest clouds. I punched them out from a painted paper cast-off on my desk. 
3. The paper takes watercolors pretty decently, so I decided to write with them across the paper as a "background" on the plainer pages. 
4. I made my own tagged paper-clips with a bag from Staples and little banners I picked up on clearance years ago. (Here's what the Smash version looks like.)

The other fun part about finishing this spread was using Google Hangout for the first time. I was still a little sick over the weekend, so instead of going out to Becca's, I added her in the video hangout, as well as a few other art friends. We chatted and doodled and painted. I find I'm apt to spent more time in the studio when working along-side someone -- not talking, necessarily, but while they, too, are creating. And ever since Skype made three-way-calling a premium service, I've not used it as much. I'm pretty sure I'll be 'hanging out' more now that Google's version has proven tons of fun!

And here's something I realized as I worked in the Smash book:

People say these are art journals for scrapbookers; I think they're also scrapbooks for art journalers!

Creating a Spray Ink Textured Art Journal Background (video)

Remeber that photo I posted a few days ago? Here's the video that goes through how I created it. 

Let me know what you think; I tried something new in chatting while I worked so you could see and hear my process.