Sketch Books

My friend Maggie Bergman has a post on her blog that I thought was wonderful. She showed one of her jewelry designs from the beginning to the end. Not process photos, but sketch book photos.

She found a seed pod, made a sketch, and completed the jewelry piece from her sketches that actually looked like what she sketched. 

I have a lot of sketch books, and I doodle a lot, but I rarely ever make something that resembles a "doodle" that I did.

I think the reason for that is that I have a collage mentality. I really don't know what the end result will look like. It just happens as I go along. It's always an adventure for me. 

I'm not unhappy at all with my free form process, but I think it is wonderful that she can create exactly what she intended in her sketch! Sometime I'll try that!

Below are some of my sketch books. I love using a book that I have made, but I also buy them too. Click on Maggie Bergman above and see what she did. I think you'll like her process.

In The Beginning......

I woke up way too early one morning and lost my mind! That is to say that I decided to start a blog.

Why did I decide to do this? Two reasons. I'm hoping it will cause me to be a bit more organized in my life, and it seems like a place that I can share my works, ideas, & creativity. I'm an eclectic artist, but I'm not a writer, and that is the scary part.

So here is my process to begin this foreign thing:

I had certain requirements involving what it would look like:

1) It had to be easy on the eyes.

2) The background couldn't be black.

3) The template doesn't include bears or butterflies!

4)  Subtly so as not to compete with my photos. 

5 ) I found that templates that had their graphic in the upper right corner were disturbing to my eye, so I wanted something opposite of that.

I spent HOURS looking at templates and finally bookmarked a total or 28. Then came the elimination process:

Round 1 - cut by 50%! Good job, pat myself on the back! Only 14 left.

Round 2 - This was more difficult, 11 remaining

Round 3 - 8 left

At this point, everything is fuzzy. I somehow managed to get it down to 3, then 2. Took a vote between a couple of friends, and finally had the one I wanted......yay!

I'm not a very computer savvy person, so I needed some help to make the header. Enter Paige of Hammer, Stitch, Burn, a wonderful creative and smart and sensitive friend. I better not forget that patience is one of her virtues!

We quickly threw together a pile of stuff (my stuff) and took a bunch of photos. We settled on 2, then began to work on them to make a final header that I would be happy with FOREVER because I don't want to ever loose my mind like that again. :-}

Here's the one I didn't choose, and it was a hard choice.

What do you think? Send me a comment or email. Did I choose the best one? I'd love to hear what you think because creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum! (I like that!)