We have all started on the Equisite Corpse that I talked about in the last post. The theme we have decided on is Harajuku Girlz! These are the famous Japanese fashion girls who parage on Harajuku Street.

This will be a mixed media swap and at the end we will all get a journal with everyones work in it. The artists who were invited into the swap are Pearl Moon, Suzie MacMahon, Annie Hesse, Me, Rodney, Emanda and Wendy and Pam Grose.

BTW Im not too keen on the name and Im also not too keen on doing skeletons and rotting corpses  UHG………….so I will be planning other kinds of figures.

Ok heres the next one for you.

And The last one

I have followed along with them myself and made one which I just love. Its big and bold and the paper is amazing. I know most people are really busy at this time of year but there are also people looking for stuff to fill their days so I hope you enjoy this.

Here is Part One!

Here is Part Two!
By the way, you can use any strong linen thread to sew the journal together.

I hope you really enjoy these.
Love Di

I have finalized the date when the fabric book class will start. Class will start on Monday November 23rd which is just over 1 week away. The price is $60 and you will get around 20 videos to watch showing step by step how to make the fabric book.
PLEASE NOTE: The class videos are taped using a tripod so the video is steady.
I have taught this class only once in USA and the students had the best time. They loved the class and each item they made was different. Its also an easy class for anyone. You do need a sewing machine however!

The class will be made up of many videos that you will be able to watch over and over. I find these classes sooooooo much better than photos and text and am always available for questions.

The Fabric Book will teach you a number of techniques including:
1: Pieceing Fabric together to make wonderful backgrounds.
2: How to make my beaded fabric beads
3: How to Cut sew and embellish faces in pieces onto the background
4: How to use 3 dimensional objects to pep up a page
5: Simple beading
6: Drawing Funky faces
7: Putting the book together
8: Making wonderful cords from threads.
9: beading into cords to embellish the book

Although the class will start in November, you will continue to have access to the class videos till February 23rd. That way if you just have time for a little bit at a time you will still have heaps of time to finish your book.

As soon as you pay, which you can do via credit card or Paypal, I will send you out your supply list and any measurements and patterns you will need. The night before class starts you will be sent an invite via email with the information you need to access the class.

Can’t wait to see you in class:-)
Di

The Fabric Book Class will have many videos and be priced at $60. Here is the video which shows what you will learn.

Just wanted you to know that I have now chosen the 3rd teacher for my art retreat . She is Allison Marano from USA. She will be teaching exclusively for me while she is in Australia. Here is her website so you can see her wonderful work:-)

Hi everyone,
As you will see in the link on the right of the page, I am organising an Art Retreat in Queensland, Australia in 2010. I just wanted to write about it to let everyone who reads this blog know all about it.

The retreat will have 3 teachers who will each teach the same one day class for 3 days running. One third of the students will be in each class so each student will participate in all classes. One of the classes will be a beading class which is fine for beginners onwards, another will be a full on, techniques filled class, involving a figure and the other class is yet to be determined.

We will  have one amazing teacher from USA, Anne Hesse. Annie has been teaching for many years and she is a very talented artist who has a natural flare for colour and texture and  she is also funny, caring and no nonsense. You can see her work at her website Anniedolls and to see what she will be teaching go to dyzee.com

The next teacher is the wonderful Pam Grose. I am sure you all know of her. Her reputation as being one of the most caring , hardworking and talented artists is very well known. Once again go to dyzee.com to see pictures of what she will be teaching.

The venue I have chosen is in Morayfield, which is near my home and about 1/2 hr drive from Brisbane airport going north. It has not only function rooms, but a couple bars for those of you who like a drink and a bistro for food. Nearby and within easy walking distance Take away places like KFC, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks and Sissler. The venue is also very close to a major shopping centre.

The price is not set yet but will be moderate as I am keen to make this event accessible to all. I am dreaming up exciting competitions, suprises and swaps and challenges that you can tale part in at the event. We will also have a teachers trading night, a students trading night and some other things that I cant talk about. Anyway it will be heaps of fun and I really look forward to meeting you there.:-)

Hi everyone, here’s a couple of new journal pages at last.

Right now I am trying to invent a style for my journaling. I don’t want to continue using magazine pages for my images as I feel they are too shiney and  of course you have to watch for copyright issues. I am playing around trying to get a really unique “look” to my pages.

To explain………………Claudine Helmuth has the most unique style and no one ever seems to copy her look. I must say her look is not one that appeals to me at all, but it does make a good example for me.

Teesha Moore is my hero in Visual Journaling, but many other people have her “look” and if mine is to be unique it has to look all mine, no one elses.

When designing dolls, I have my own style! It seems that people know instinctively when a doll is my design and I want this for my journaling. That way I have something different to teach and something interesting to say. This is going to be a fun process.

I have bought myself a little cam corder and in the future I hope to start teaching online again. My classes will be different though as they will now be video classes rather than photos and text. This is very exciting , although a learning curve for me.

Next week my friend Annie, from USA arrives to spend 2 weeks with me. I am so excited as I havn’t seen her since I taught last in USA a couple of years ago. We are planning to do a lot of art and play, a lot of eating talking and laughing as we always do when we get together Woohoo!!!

My last journal also came from Liz, the lady who makes these. It is a gorgeous Red Hard covered journal with a cut out window covered in gold wire. That one had black pages. The best thing about these is that all the pages are cut with a saw so they have lovely torn edges to the pages. The pages are also high quality paper that is pretty strong and stands up to a fair bit of work!

I would highly recommend these journals if any of you want to buy one.

Her email addy is liz@bookartstudios.co.nz

Here is a pic of the inside..she has even painted the pages for me LOL LOL

Anyway, in the meantime before the magazine arrived I found some reference to the fact that the first issue ( which had sold out) was now available digitaly for only $9.95. So I bought it. I just wanted to tell you how wonderful I think it is to buy these mags this way. No wastage of paper, no magazines taking up space at home. I love the fact that you can enlarge everything and get a really closeup view of the pictures. If they mention a website they have live links so you can go right there and see what they are talking about. I spent all day reading the magazine from front to back and loved it.

I usually buy Cloth Paper Scissors magazine which costs me around $18 here in Australia, including postage, but I see I can get 6 issues  of the digital version for I think $26.95. which works out at $4.50 per issue . Thats the way I intend to go in the future.

I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on this as I think its a fabulous way to get the magazines.

Finally today the posted issue of Art Journaling has arrived so I am off to read it:-)

Check out this art journal video. Doesn’t look much at the start but I love the pages at the end:-)

I was surfing lots of visual journaling blogs yesterday and first I must say I was surprised how many are really about the bloggers personal life with a little journaling here and there. I was looking for blogs just about journaling and didnt find many of them.

However, on at least three of them I found mentions of the “10 Minute Collage”. Basically what you do is sit down with your Journal and a couple of magazines. I love the “Oprah” magazine for this. You just flick through the pages quite fast and if anything stops you, you rip it out. After you have thress or four images you tear around them and glue them into your page in a way that you like the look of.

Next you hunt for words or a sentence that you like and tear that out and glue it into your page. The aim of this collage is not to over think it, or even think it!:-) Its all done intuitively!! While you are creating you are actually in what I call “the zone”. Its a great place to be…………I think your brain in actually in alpha and its very peaceful and relaxing.

If you can commit to doing a “10 minute collage” each day, its a great way to look back after a month or so to get a picture of your life and your thoughts.

I would suggest that if you hate the blank white page in your journals, spend a day painting the backgrounds before you start doing your daily collages, or you could go back over the pages and fill in all the blank spots with doodles and colour and more journaling later.

Ok I have just stopped and done a “10 Minute Collage” to show you and the batteries in my camera are flat. I have them on charge and will come back later today and add the photo.

In the meantime I would love you to add a comment or teo and if you create a 10 Minute collage please send them to me via email at di@dyzree.com and I will show them on this blog. Would love to have you here:-)

Di

I always was abit of a snob about scrapbooking, but found myself at the scrapbooking shop buying paper and all the other stuff  I needed to put some scrapbooked pages together.  Luckily I didnt need too much as I already had the tags and some paper and the right pens etc.

So far I have put about 6 pages together. Its been fun and easy at the same time. Sorry the pic isn’t too good,

Another good way to zone out and get into the creative space in my brain. And I must say my photos look so much better for it. I only have about 1 million more to go! EEEKKK.

It will be lovely to be teaching again after such a long break. As a lot of you will know, my dyzee.com website has been taken down for the time being. At this time I am not sure if I will resurrect it or not.

I plan to teach a fun collage on canvas and a visual journal/altered book in a kids board book. They will both be fun classes with heaps of techniques to learn. I will announce more about the classes as time gets nearer.

Before I start working on the classes I had to get my camera working well. My newest digital camera has decided not to go anymore, so I had to take a look at an older on we have. I am not good at reading instructions. I have realised with Nicoles help that I am just not making the most of the camera. Interestingly, it has many settings that I have never bothered to find out about LOL LOL OKKK I am just not good with this stuff. I like to just point and shoot and expect incredible pictures.:-)

Anyway, after a lot of fiddling I think I finally have this camera sussed.!!Hopefully there are better pictures coming for this blog:-)

Lately I have had a lot of realizations about life and art and I have decided to air them here and make this writing more personal than just adding journal pages. I hope that makes this more interesting to you. I also plan to blog more often as well.

For a while now I have been reading a blog called dooce. It is a funny and very interesting blog. Please feel free to check it out. It helps my day start out very upbeat.

Today I have been checking out Aussie arty blogs. Wow! I never knew so many existed. I think I am being educated about the latest trends in handmade products. Amazing! I will continue to add links to the blogs I like as I find them.

Yesterday I decided to clean up my messy desk, the one I paint and journal on and instead spent half of the day journaling and stamping:-)

Today my first job after this is to clean this desk as I have a visitor coming on Monday, after that I can start again:-) Whenever I an on the computer my persian cat Jesse is always right here with me so today I have managed to get some photos of her. I also got a closeup with out red eye!! In all the time I have had her I have never managed to get one with out her eyes being red so this is a first! She is a pretty grumpy looking cat, but she really isnt like that at all.  She is the most gorgeous cat ever