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Are you looking for a way to add some vintage charm to your art journaling? Look no further than vintage ephemera paper! Ephemera paper can be found in antique stores, flea markets, and online. It’s typically paper with a vintage style, such as old postcards, letters, newspaper clippings, and more. I use vintage ephemera paper in my art journal, collage art and even in the backgrounds of my canvas paintings. I started collecting vintage ephemera when I was just a teenager and

Photo by Deeana Arts on As an artist, it can be easy to get discouraged when we don't meet our goals or feel like we're not making progress. However, it's important to remember that failure is an essential part of the creative process. By embracing our mistakes and learning from them, we can expand our horizons and become even better artists. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of your failures: Acknowledge your mistakes: Acknowledge that you have made a mistake and

This month’s Sketchbox supplies were all about Manga art supplies. I think many times people get into the idea that just because an art tool is created for a certain purpose that there is the only one way to use it. I think the thing I love the most about getting the Sketchbox each month is the challenge of finding ways to use new supplies in my art practice that fit inside my style. I don’t have to change my style to fit the box, rather I’m always testing out ways to push a

My Illustrative Botanical illustrations has to be the most asked-for class. I've had the class scripted and planned for a couple of months, but I was waiting for the new studio to be done before I started filming. I wrapped up filming last week and my amazing son and video editor took over, and today I finally got to hit publish. I'm currently offering it on Skillshare and for those who are members of Art After Loss Community the class will also be available there. In this c

What is annotating? Basically, it means that you underline/highlight and add notes interacting with the text. I do most often write in my books, but there are ways to annotate and not mark up your books. Here's how I annotate my books, and if you want you can try it yourself. Why you should annotate your books Mostly Because it’s fun . That’s the main reason I annotate books. Many annotate books for classes/homework, which is where I learned to do it, but now I do it for fun.

Artists hear all the time the advice that you need to find “YOUR STYLE” as if it’s this thing playing hide-n-seek with you. That if you turn over enough rocks you’ll find it hiding beneath. This thinking messed with my head for so many years. It’s something that my son and I were discussing the other day and I told him to let go of the idea of finding his style, but rather to get comfortable with his process. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized doing just that was the

Growing up I had many in my family who were clay/tile artists, but sadly that talent I do not count as one of my own. It's something I would love to learn and get better at, but in the meantime, I had fun playing with Air-Dry Clay and making some fun paint palettes of my own. I ordered some Air-Dry clay. There were a couple different brands, you can even get the kind that you bake in the oven. The downside of the Air-Dry Clay was how quickly it started to dry making it hard t

Vintage books are one of my love languages. I love the way they look lined on the shelf. The way they smell and how they feel in my hands. I especially love the old books that are tattered and falling apart. They make you slow down and gently open their pages. There is something amazing about the life each of these books have lived and all the owners and readers that have flipped through these pages before me. It took me many years to have the courage the cut into an old book

Water-soluble graphite is a type of graphite that is soluble in water, which just means it can be dissolved. Now, regular old graphite can also be "spread" with water a bit, but the water-soluble graphite will actually dissolve and become ink-like when it's wet. It can be moved and spread over a surface, much like watercolor paint. You can control how thick (dark) and thin (light) the wash becomes by how much water you add. Water-soluble graphite comes in different grades of

After collecting vintage papers, newspapers, magazines, photographs, etc. for so many years I've decided it's time to share these special papers so I've gathered and created ephemera packs of vintage paper. Visit my Etsy Shop to buy your own pack.

I've taken my surplus of paintings and sketches and turned them into fun collage ephemera packs that will be great for collage art, art journaling, scrapbooking and junk journals.

How many times have you started a drawing challenge and stopped after a week, or halfway through the month when life got crazy? (hand raises) In October I completed a 30-day drawing challenge. Even though I’ve done a few in the past, this one taught me a lot about myself. Like, I’m not a fan of drawing prompts. But that’s a conversation for another day. As artists, we like to believe that we create art each day, but the reality is we wear many hats and some days we don't actu

There's a certain vulnerability that comes with putting what's going on within ourselves out for everyone to see. Neuroscience has even confirmed that creative people think and even act differently than an average person. But sometimes our own work enemy is ourselves. Photo by Ryanniel Masucol on As an artist and a writer I know first hand how easy it for me to undermine my own best intentions. For some it may look like procrastination or that life is just "too busy". For ot

Line art drawings are how I started my artistic journey. As a kid it's all I drew, and then when I picked up art again as an adult, it was a safe place to begin. It was during the Zentangle craze so finding drawing tools were easy to come by and there were thousands of tutorials for line art doodles available online. I ended up creating fashion line art doodles that I shared on Pinterest and that's how the editors at Walter Foster found me and asked me to be a part of their f

The history of the Commonplace Books goes back to the Middle Ages. It's believed that the concept originated in ancient Greece and Rome, although they become most popular during the Renaissance and early Modern Period, when students and scholars used them for study. In 1706, John Locke wrote  “A New Method of Making Commonplace Books” where he gave specific advice on how to arrange material by subject and category. Much the way a database may be used today. Eventually Commonp

I spent years frustrated by my journaling habits. I would promise to keep a specific book for each theme and within days I'd be jotting down everything in one notebook. It wasn't until I learned what Commonplace Books are that I realized they were what I'd been creating all along!! These special books are a place to collect all your musings, ideas and experiences. I love to keep a Traditional or Multi-Use, as I like to call them, notebook. But I also have specific Commonplace

What is Creative Burnout? Burnout at it’s core is exhaustion. Whether that’s an emotional, mental or physical exhaustion it all plays into the burnt out feeling. But what causes the burnout? For me, it typically follows prolonged stress, intense self-doubt, feeling stick in a rut or struggling to manage an unmanageable workload. It’s rarely just one thing, it’s usually a combination of many things feeling way to intense and no real answers or solutions showing themselves. Exh

This weeks Creative Palette is from my "Find My Heart" Digital Mixed Media Graphic Art Illustration. "Find My Heart" Mixed Media Graphic Art If you’re interested in learning how to create backgrounds like this yourself or how to use them in graphic art illustrations, check out  my latest Skillshare Class .

This weeks Creative Palette is from my "Alone" Digital Mixed Media Graphic Art Illustration. "Alone" Mixed Media Graphic Art If you’re interested in learning how to create backgrounds like this yourself or how to use them in graphic art illustrations, check out  my latest Skillshare Class .

Creating a graphic art background in Adobe Fresco is the first step to creating my mixed media graphic art illustrations, but they also become art pieces in themselves. Layer One ~ With the Live Oil Brushes paint in the background. This is a intuitive process...so there is no right or wrong way to lay down the color. I select a color palette I want to use and then apply the color across the page. For this first layer I used the OilPaint Chunky brush size 512 with paint mix se