To Zen Doodle is to Let Your Creativity Flow

 My garden was my inspiration for today's project. Or rather, fighting off the bunnies for my tomatoes and strawberries was my inspiration I should say. I put screen sup around the strawberries, and threw bird-netting over the framework in my garden, but they still seem to get in and cheat me out of all the work I did to get my veggies and fruit to grow. Does anybody have a useful tip for keeping them out?

Meanwhile, I drew a warren of bunnies and let the Zen flow from my fingers onto the page. The quote is one of my favorites, "I love bunnies short and tall, but I love chocolate ones best of all". Do you see the "one that got away? (Hint: top left)

I didn't realize how fast and furiously strawberry plants spread. I devoted a third of my backyard garden to the fruit, but I had to put a "fence" in between the strawberries and tomato plants as the fruit has taken over half my garden! It's hard enough to keep the plants alive as we're experiencing a drought in northern Illinois. Add to that those pesky bunnies and I'm at my wit's end.

BTW, I decided to give my trailer the name "Wit's End". That way residents will know where to come when get to my place. They'll be "at wit's end". LOL

I'm Being Followed by a Moon Shadow...

 

Today's post features a little doodling and some creative paper cutting. It started out as a full-page Zen doodle, but I messed up a large part of the doodle. Should I turn the page and start over? No, I thought I could improve upon my mistakes "happy little accident".

Since I drew the doodle in a perfect circle, the the thought of a moon popped into my head. A moon with flowers?? Yes, have you never heard of the Flower Moon, which blooms at the start of Spring? It's a little bigger than a crescent, and using  powerful telescope, you can see the outlines of flowers where the "hidden" part of the moo lies in the night sky.

I cut out a crescent shape from some designer paper for the part of the moon that shines down on the Earth. It covered up the imperfect doodles that came out of my pen. To keep both sides of the moon  cohesive, I used a yellow colored pencil to fill in between the flowers I drew. Not enough to make a difference, I added a little shading within each flower with same colored pencil.  

I cut out a circle from some shimmery dark blue paper and framed my flower moon. I sprinkled this night sky with stars, using my Posca white paint marker. Look, there's s shooting star. 

Make a wish!

My New Art Journal

 I broke down and bought a new art journal, as my last one was on its last blank pages. And the new one is HUGE, 9x12! Since there are only a few pages I've used, I thought you might want to take a peek. When I get a new journal, I give it a fresh new look. The cover is simply a piece of designer paper, bordered with washi tape and just one artsy quote, "Creative minds are rarely tidy".

I decided to completely cover the inside cover with Art and Creativity quotes from Pinterest. Some of my favorites are adhered to it, along with washi tape borders. 

I started the first page at the end of January and decided I would date my pages, and occasionally write a short note on the why, what and how I felt at the time of the crime drawing. I used a small tag as my inspiration and colored it with a teal Copic.

Here I drew intersecting squares and then filled them with various designs, trying some I had not drawn before now. 

I'm not that good at creating Mandalas, probably because I don't use rulers, nor do I have a compass. After my two colliding circles were filled in, they looked lonely on the page, so I surrounded them with flowers. 

And next is the reason I wanted to "show off" my new journal (if you've read all the way down to here). The page below was inspired by Pinterest. It uses watercolors and was supposed to make these beautiful spheres of color mixing into each other. Mine didn't play nice. In fact, it was a "fail". But fails are what teach us, make a stronger and remind us that nothing in life is perfect, nor should it go exactly to our own plans. I wanted to show you my failed drawing. I decided to take pen to it and get some Zen doodling in it. It's not my fave page, of course, but not every page can be a favorite!

Keep crafting and have fun. That's why we do it, right?!