if it's June, it must be time for ICAD ...

it's June 1, official kick-off day for the 2012 index-card-a-day project.  i participated last year and loved working on index cards.   somehow 3 x 5 white space is not nearly so daunting as a blank journal page!  for the 2011 project, i dug out my collection of watercolor pencils, dusted them off, and dove in.  i had a blast working with the w/c pencils, especially in my new w/c Strathmore Visual Journal.  you can't beat the fun of smushing color around on your page with your favorite waterbrush pen. 

my stash of fabulous blank index cards from Levenger's is sitting in the middle of the table, ready for my first brush strokes, pen strokes, pencil strokes of the 2012 ICAD season.  of course my colored pencils, pens, crayons, calligraphy pens are sitting there waving at me, going "me too, me too" ... 

this year i'll try to post some samples so that you can see what i'm creating as the summer progresses. 

let the games begin!!  oh, and feel free to join in the fun.  just sayin' .... 

** thanks to Tammy at DaisyYellow for kicking it off with the guidelines.  on, what else, an index card, lol 

if it's April, it must be International Fake Journal Month

funny how that rolls around again each year and manages to catch me off guard!

i had an idea for this year, but after exchanging some emails with Roz to clarify the ground rules, i realized that my idea was not really suited to the concept of a fake journal.  Roz suggested i tackle my concept during NaNoWriMo in November, so i may very well do that.

as of now, six days in, i'm still undecided if i'll actually participate this year.  last year i "armchair traveled" to Ireland, and that was great fun.  this year i'm low-energy and behind already on my writing classes, so i hesitate to take on another writing project.  but you never know.  stay tuned ;)

of paper and pens and such

so, we all know how addicted i am to blank notebooks, journals, pens, colored markers, Washi paper tapes, stickers, ephemera, and .... well, it's an endless list.  i'm nothing if not obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive, or as i fondly refer to myself ... OCAR.

today, i'm going to share some sites i particular enjoy.  let's call it Link Love, if you will.  my goal is to enable share with other addicts paper/pen lovers like myself.  i want to spread the addiction love ;)

here are the links, in no particular order of importance ....

(1)  penchant for paper's notebook system -- i just discovered this today thanks to a post over on another favorite, notebook stories.  i love the way Heather has organized her notebooks, although my personal philosophy is that consolidation is the best way to go because it presents a snapshot of your life in one place.

(2) it's almost April 1 and time for another round of International Fake Journal Month (IFJM), which is one of the reasons i check Roz Stendahl's blog regularly.  today she had a fun video about creating a journal with paper scraps.  check it out.

(3) speaking of IJFM, in my "journaling for memoir" class i'm taking, i wrote a list of things that i have nurtured me, including the fabulous new idea for this year's fake journal (last year was my fake trip to Ireland, or as my instructor Amber described it, my armchair travel).  Amber was intrigued, so i sent her links to Roz's IFJM site.  she found the concept really exciting and wrote her own posting about it.  check out Amber's IFJM post.

(4) always looking for the latest and greatest from Moleskine (let's all say it together now .... mol-a-skeen-a).  imagine my delight at discovering the latest new thing from Moleskine: postal notes.  think of it, little moleskine notebook thingies that you can write or draw or collage in and then send to someone else.  wouldn't you love to get one of those in the mail?  i know i would!  

(5) and just yesterday Rice Freeman-Zachery posted a link to her interview with Mark B Hill at Create Mixed Media.  check out his envelope project ... how fabulous is that?!  and yes, i sent my address to him in the hopes that one day, one of his fabulous envelopes will magically appear in my mailbox.  *grin*

i have hordes scads an endless supply of links to share, but i'll save those for another day.  maybe a rainy day, but there are so few of those here in the desert that it'll more than likely be a sunny day when next i post Link Love.

less is more ...

last august i concluded why have 1 when you can have 3. now i have 3 blogs sitting out in the blogosphere gathering dust instead of just 1. what's wrong with this picture? i'm rethinking this approach as a result of the blogging class i'm taking. well, ok, really i was already thinking about it and have been since i created the new blogs. you know, the old saw "do one thing and do it well", or "jack of all trades, master of none."

but Susannah's class has brought the idea back to the forefront of my lazy brain. i'm thinking to pull these other interests (artsy fartsy stuff and genealogy/memoir/family stuff) back to the mobytes home page, possibly as a link to another page, or maybe a tab. as i always say when i take too long to make a response bid in bridge, "thinking, thinking" ...

oh yeah, and i definitely to need to spruce up the "about me" bio ... the current version says next to nothing about who i am. i'll have to jazz it up, make me more interesting, lol ...

stay tuned for more exciting developments in the world of mo ;)

already in love ....

with the new blogging class, Blogging from the Heart, and we're only at day 3 of week 1!!! that says a LOT about how good Susannah is as an instructor, never mind all her other talents ;)

i'm glad to see i've at least got one of the cardinal rules well in hand: simplicity. simplicity of layout, of color, of content on the page (well, ok, that needs a spot of refinement, lol).

but just based on today's lesson alone, i have some minor changes ... tweaks as it were ... to implement that will make the page a bit more personal, a bit more reflective of me. by this weekend i hope to have them in place.

excitement abounds! at least for THIS blog geek.