Happy Monday!  Most of you know that I filled up my old art journal and needed a new one.  I made this one out of materials laying around the house.  My employer threw out a stack of perfectly good manila file folders because they were flooded.  Rather than risk handing a potential customer a water damaged folder, they tossed them.  Since water damage doesn’t really offend me, I collected them and have a couple hundred of the things lying around.  That, some old cardboard boxes, some newspaper, string and masking tape and voilà: A Brand Spanking New Art Journal!

The stitching is a method I picked up from Samantha Kira and the binding I picked up from Leslie Herger.

It’s a great size and I’ve already started playing in it onThe Artistic Biker Live! Be sure and join us every Thursday night from 7-9p U.S. Central time to see what happens next! It’s a crazy good time for everyone.

The video for the new Art Journal can be found at The YouTube, or you can just watch it in the embedded player below:

A week or two ago I mentioned a time saving system I had discovered that might win me the Nobel Prize.  Most of that was sarcasm as I have desperately been struggling with ways to balance art, work, and family.   However, since I received a couple of e-mails on it from other people struggling with the EXACT same issues, I thought I would share with you what I’ve learned.

As artists we all face a two-headed demon.  We love the simplicity and elegance of lines and design and composition; but we hate being squished into structure.  I am a list maker.  I have been a compulsive list maker my entire life.  If there were a List Maker’s Anonymous group, I would be the charter member.  Maybe I’ll add that to the list.  I am probably the world’s worst list follower, doubly so because I’m a man.  Once I’ve made the list, the problem is solved and we can all go about our business, right?  Wrong.  Making the list is only half the problem.  That’s key so I’ll say it again in man language, it’s only HALF of the problem.  If you are going to solve the problem, which is what we men pride ourselves on*, then you have to address the second half, the follow through!  That’s the bit I’m working on now.

The two biggest breakthroughs I have made recently are to right down my to-do list and keep it in front of me, and to learn to say no.  The first part, the list and keeping it in front of me, that was easy.  As I said earlier, I’m a list maker.  However, I found a video from Erika Douglas a couple of weeks ago that showed me how much of an amateur I am at making lists.  She’s almost half my age and a self made millionaire.  I hate her.  :)  But the little cute-heart made a video and a blog post that really hit home for us list makers.  In her post, “Getting Things Done,” she not only outlines the way she makes and keeps her list, but she explains that if you go several days without addressing something then you should recognize you either don’t have the time, knowledge, or desire to do that something and should outsource it.  That’s brilliance.

The saying NO is the harder part.  I was brought up to always say yes to my parents and school teachers when they asked me to do something.  That works when you only have one or three people asking you.  But then you hit the real world and you have spouses, children, neighbors, city officials, employers, coworkers, and yes even your parents and teachers for some.   At some point you have to learn to say no to some of the requests, no matter how reasonable they may seem.  I have been saying no to some things like watching TV and working on Saturdays and it has freed up TONS of time to do more of the things I love.  Try saying no to some of the time eaters in your life and see if it gives you more freedom.

Do any of you have any tips for getting things done?  I would love to hear them and I know I’m not the only one.

*I really don’t mean to be offensive to the ladies here, I’m just trying to get the men’s attention.  I don’t have a pork chop or a picture of a scantily clad young lady so I have to sort of challenge them.  You know how they are.)

Man, do I love discoveries!  I love sitting around and thinking about stuff and wondering if something is even possible, then jumping up and finding out.  I always used to stop at the wondering.  The other night I was wondering if you painted with glow in the dark or neon paints, how would they look under a black light.  Then I wondered what would happen if you painted over them with regular acrylics?  The picture doesn’t really do this justice in that my black light is a simple 60w bulb, but the glow paints shined right through!  You couldn’t see them at all with the lights on.  That means that I can paint a picture in glow paints, paint over it with regular paints and the bottom layer would only be visible under a black light.  Oh yummy!

Tonight on The Artistic Biker Live! I’ll break out the BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW JOURNAL and play with this underpainting concept.  It looks like it’ll be loads of fun.  Also tonight, the lovely and talented Eveline Hessels, better known as @EvelineTimeless will join me for a chat discussing her recent journal flip videos, her amazing paper beads, and of course, The Big Secret Project!  Be sure and tune in from 7-9p U.S. Central time on The Artistic Biker Live! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-artistic-biker.

Holiday weekends always throw me off.  In the U.S., we just celebrated the 4th of July or Independence day.  Because it fell on a Sunday and most large corporations promise the employees a certain number of holidays off work, we were given Monday off.  When that happens, I wake up on Monday thinking about all the stuff I need to get done before I go back to work on Tuesday and it just doesn’t occur to me that it is MONDAY!  For instance, I forget to post to my blogs.

So now it is Tuesday and I’ll tell you about the Journal’s End entry in my art journal.  This is the art journal I have been sharing with you on YouTube and U-stream pretty much from its inception.  All but the first four entries are recorded on YouTube.  It is kind of sad to see this one come to an end, but it means I get to start another one.

On the The Artistic Biker Live!, I had the opportunity to give away a free membership to Dirty Footprints Studio’s Art Journal Love Letters workshop.  I took down all of the names of the people in the chat during the broadcast and held a drawing.  My friend PoeticDreams won the drawing, which was particularly exciting because she had been having a very bad day.  After the drawing, I pasted all of the names into my final entry to remind me who was there with me on that journey’s end.

Special thanks to: ArtistPoetGirl, Juriaan13, Poeticdreams, Ikerrilove, TheAmpleGoddess, EvelineTimeless, LifeUnity, GodsMixedMediaGirl, DoreneGayle, and JournalArtista!

You can watch the video at The YouTube, or just watch it in the embedded player below: