Collage Art Journal Folios

This weekend I finally finished the last three folios for a book I have been wanting to make for about two years now!  The folios are quite large... 12x22 so the finished page ends up being 12x11.  Here are front/back photos of the last three pages:

Come back tomorrow to see what I did with them!! 

ACA Conference

In March I got to go to the American Counseling Association Conference in Orlando, FL.  My Journey started at DFW where I found this art in the terminal:

I was absolutely LOVING the weather in Orlando because it was so nice - much warmer than Texas, but not yet hot.

At the ACA Expo the Association for Creativity in Counseling hand an art activity for us to do.  We used alcohol inks on the back of dominoes to make cool, one of a kind, magnets:

Here is the table when I made my domino:

Here is what I purchased at the Expo... a chart to explain feelings.  This will be (and already has been) useful for working with my clients, and it looks like an artists pallet so that is a plus!  The cards at the bottom are a deck with therapy exercises/directives.  I also got it for help working with clients.

A sink mirror selfie... I was very glad that I had this belt bag because carrying around a back on my shoulder all day was making my arm hurt!

One of the best things about the conference was finding out about the Military and Government Counseling Association and meeting other people who work with military and veterans!

After the conference was over, before I went home, my awesome best friend came to get me and took me to Downtown Disney.

We had lunch at Bongos - a Cuban restaurant - and it was delicious! 

Here I am with my awesome best friend:

It was great seeing her again after 6 months!!  I really enjoyed this conference, but it certainly did keep me busy 7am until about 10 or 11pm each night!!  I learned a lot and I even signed up for next year which is going to be in Montreal!  It will be my first trip to Canada and I am really hoping that I can take a few days before/after so that I can explore the city!

Glitter ATCs

I recently participated in a glitter ATC swap... "glitter" was the only directive.  Here are some of my creations:

I thought this was fun; it was definitely a challenge to use glitter paper.  I suppose I could use actual glitter or glitter glue, but I got hooked on using glitter paper.  Glitter paper, is, by the way, VERY hard to glue onto.  But, I was very happy with my creations and I hope that whoever they end up with likes them!

6 Degrees of Creativity Workshops

Hello friends!  I am very excited to announce to you that I will be an instructor for this summer's 6 Degrees of Creativity Workshops!

If you follow this link you can read more about the other instructors and I, and some about the workshops!  More information to follow in the coming weeks!

Scrapbook Expo

Mom and I went to a scrapbook expo in February.  It was fun... we did some make and takes:

And I got Lots of goodies:

I used those flour sack towels for screen printing  (Which I posted about a few days ago!).  I have already used my envelope templates too - I made some cool envelops from some of my paper stash.  The military/patriotic stuff was mostly for work (especially the Air Force stuff because I am Army!!), but I also thought it would be good to have patriotic (red, white and blue) stuff for Memorial Day and 4th of July. I am not a scrapbook person but I always find something cool for my art adventures at scrapbook sales.  What is the coolest thing that you have found at a scrapbook expo?

Last Art Pics from JAN

A few more random art pictures from January.  A postcard that I made... love the saying on it...

 A spread in my Fitness Art Journal:

 a spread in my regular art journal:

 A Watercolor pencil mandala I did in my work art journal:

 Using random paint and some stencils in my work art journal:

 And using random paint at work on some sticky labels - essentially I made my own stickers!!

These photos conclude my art pictures form January.  I hope you enjoyed seeing all the catch-up photos!  Have a great day!!

More art!!

Today I have some miscellaneous art pictures for you.  I actually went through a short stamp making frenzy for a bit.  I made these Texas Stamps....

And I made address stamps for myself and my mom.  I lost the desire to carve after that, though I am sure it will return at some point.  

Here are some art journaling pictures:

This last picture shows a page where I really was just playing around, but I really like how it turned out.  Sometimes I think you get the best results when you just play and have no plan! Also, its a lot less stress that way and we can all use less stress, right?

Screen-printing Class

One of the things that has been keeping me busy is that I have been taking art classes here and there around Texas.  One of the first classes I took was Screen Printing in Austin at Jerry's Artarama.  Here are some photos from the class....

My screen (the one on the left) getting ready to be exposed on the light board:

 My screen (it has two designs).. before I printed with it for the first time... the pink stuff is ink, you know I had to get hot pink ink!!

 I made a lot of prints...they were all over the place:

 And some t-shirts... one design you can see in the picture above, hanging on the back of the chair.  The other is here below:

 Printing on shirts is harder than you might think!  I also made some prints in my art journal to document the process:

 And here is all of the supplies that I left the store with .... I only need to get one more thing and I can print from home, including making new screens!!  I really want to try it but I have not yet had a chance to get that last piece which is the base board that you attach the screen to (temporarily) for printing.

 Once I do some printing at home I will share the results with you guys!! Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a great weekend!

Zumba!

As some of you know I got licensed to teach Zumba back on October 2014.  This week I started teaching my own classes.  I will be teaching at 6pm on Mondays and Thursdays at my local YMCA.


I am so happy that I am back to teaching group fitness - I really love it.  Since October I went to Zumba Basic 2 - which is the second level course for Zumba instructors and it teaches you additional rhythms and their core steps to use in your classes.  Here are a few pictures from my class:

Most recently I got licensed to teach Aqua Zumba!  I LOVE water aerobics and I LOVE Zumba so I thought I could mix the two together with Aqua Zumba! Here are some photos from my Aqua Zumba class:

I have even done a few e-learning courses.  I have completed the course on Brazil and the one on India.  Each course teaches you about 4 types of music from that country and the core moves that go with the music.  I love learning about how similar and how different dance is in different parts of the world.

After teaching Zumba one evening.

The last thing I wanted to mention about Zumba is that I have decided to go to the Zumba Instructor Convention in August!

I will get 4 days of wonderful Zumba classes where I can learn new songs and new moves and how to be a better instructor.  I will also get to me other instructors from all over the world and share the Zumba love with them.  I am quite excited about convention!

My New Job

I was asked "what is your job at the college?" by one of my lovely readers, so I decided to do a post about my job - and some of the cool things I have done since working here!

My official title is "Veteran's Counselor."  I work with student veterans and family members of veterans (dependents) and help them with mental health counseling/art therapy/social services.  So, I do individual counseling, group psychoeducation (classes about mental health topics) and a lot of referrals to other community services.

I also work with the school and help them with school wide events.  I helped with a recent job fair that we had.  I helped out when we had Women in Technology Day.  Future and current women students were invited to network and learn about different fields.  I led a discussion about what it is like to be a woman in a traditionally male field.  Here are some pictures from the event:

Welding

Students from the Lineman program demonstrate what they do! 

A female student from another campus tries out what the lineman demonstrated

And I had a table at our health fair.  I did a mural about self-care (mental, emotionally, physically or spiritually) and had information about veterans services at the school and in the community.


Overall I really like working here.  Most of the people here are super nice - and a most have been working here for quite a while.  What I like most is helping the students!!  If you have any other questions, I would love to answer them, so ask away!!

Last of the January Postcards

Hello and welcome back to my art catch up.  A few more postcards for you today:

That wraps up my January postcards, except for all the Valentines Day postcards that I made.  Since they are all quite similar I am not going to share all those photos with you guys.  We will move on to something better!  Hope to see you tomorrow.