PLAY!

The last weekend of January I attended an art journaling retreat called PLAY. It was a wonderful experience for me this year. I attended last year (the first year of the retreat) as well but I think I enjoyed it even more this year than I did last year.

In 2008 I had a lot to learn about techniques and generally relaxing and enjoying my own work. I spent most of the weekend getting used to my surroundings and feeling intimidated by the work of everyone else. I took lots of photos of other people's work and of many sites around the Fort Worden campus where the retreat was held. I made several blank journals and struggled to put anything in the first one. It was a good trip and I learned a lot about me and what I really needed to start doing to enhance my journaling.

This year I was much more relaxed and I really enjoyed myself. I already knew almost half the people attending because they had returned from the previous year. The new attendees took from our excitement and contentment and I think it helped them to enjoy themselves more as well. Several of us had bought flowers for our tables and it was just wonderful.

Tracy and Teesha made us all feel at home comfortable with our style of journaling. They told us about new tools and techniques they had learn since our meeting in 2008. Here are some of the items I purchased for myself from them as well as Akamai Art Store in Port Townsend.

(Sasha has to check out and approve EVERYTHING that comes into the house...)

I found this really cool colored artists' tape that is like masking tape. The colors are bright and are really cool.

A new tool that I actually bought some of last year but didn't really know how to use it was the PanPastels. They are like a chalk pastel but they must have some kind of fixative in them or something because if you smooth them out enough over your pages they don't smear or transfer too much.

I used some on these journal pages that I started at the retreat and have been work on intermittently since I've returned. All of my friends can tell you that I am NOT a speed demon at working in my journals...

Steve made us all a small handmade journal and also gave us a really small moleskin-like journal and a wrap around closure that kept them together. He had printed "PLAY" and "2009" on the covers and what we all voted was a very close likeness of himself on the covers.

Teesha had included some cool information and a small cardboard-cover moleskin in our packets and several others distributed some cool trades intermittenly throughout the weekend. The "play" work on the green journal page above was received in a trade someone placed in my work area.

Here are some of my journal pages that I have started working on but have a way to go. "Darwin" has a "door" over his face that opens and closes. The inside has an egg on it. When it closes he has "egg on his face". There are fold over flaps on several of the pages. Some of them are smaller and some are a full-sized page.

Here are the junk journals that I made during the retreat. I have nice watercolor paper in the big one and cut up paper bags in the small ones. The journal pages I did above are in the big Cheerios one.

I had a great time and I hope I get to go back again next year!