There is a dizzying array available – if you run out of options in the bookstores, check Etsy. You can also buy decks of affirmation cards, inspiration cards, insight cards, and blessing cards, the extended family of oracle cards.

In June, I started the habit of drawing an oracle card each evening, reading its description in the book that generally comes with the deck, and thinking about it while going through a basic stretching routine. Sometimes that leads to a journal entry or an addition to my mini art journal; more often it does not, but even the least-applicable card gives me enough to think about that I stretch a bit longer than I would otherwise.

You can, of course, use oracle cards as journal prompts explicitly. Draw a card, and answer any or all of these questions:

1. Before you read the description, what does the card make you think of?
2. How well does the description correspond to the card? Where do you see the two especially well matched or especially discordant from each other?
3. Where could the message of the card apply to your life? How can you maneuver it into fitting some aspect of your life, if it doesn’t seem to as written?
4. In your life, is there an abundance of or a need for the elements outlined in the card? If the message is one of advice or divination, can you argue both in support of the message and against the message?

For a few weeks after getting into using oracle cards, I came up with a flood of card and deck ideas of my own. For a while I thought “This is my medium!” It slowed, though, and completing a good oracle deck is a lot of work – a lot of cards must be chosen and designed, and the descriptions must be drafted and reworked. However, you can make test cards or simple decks really quickly and easily. (And I am still working toward some completed oracle decks of my own.)

The easiest way to make your own cards is with blank index cards. You can use 4″ x 6″ cards for a large deck (though with index cards this size feels a little flimsy), cut the cards down – I’ve cut them into halves, quarters, even eighths! – or use cards that are already smaller. 3″ x 5″ index cards would be a reasonable size for a deck of oracle cards. Decorate one side of the cards to be the back – the techniques I listed for simple art journaling could all apply here. Typically you would want the backs to all match, but for test cards I have only been making them match thematically. I have a set that are (almost) all watercolor crayon resist, and a set that are all just filled in with colored pencil, and two sets that are watercolor-only. If you’re cutting apart large index cards, you can decorate a lot of backs in a short amount of time.

If you paint, the paper will probably get a little bumpy. Let it dry for 24 hours and then iron it, no steam, with a piece of blank paper between the paint and the iron. I found that even 24 hours later there was still a good amount of wet paint hiding in there to come off on the paper! I’m going to reuse my pressing sheets until I think of some way to use them as art in their own right.

So far I have handwritten the fronts of the cards, but my printer can print onto 4″ x 6″ paper, so I’ve got the option to print them. I have ideas for sturdier cards once my decks are more finished – the heaviest cardstock my printer can manage, and then cut it down into cards. I believe you could get 4 “full-sized” cards out of one sheet of letter-sized cardstock, or 6 small-but-not-mini cards (oracle decks are usually significantly larger than playing cards, but not always and it’s certainly not a requirement). I even have corner-rounding punches to make them nice and fancy. That process is a good while in the future, though!

Decks shown in photos:
First photo, left: Animal Kin Oracle by Sarah Wilder
First photo, right: Journey of Love Oracle, by Alana Fairchild (card meanings), Rassouli (card art), and Richard Cohn (poetry included in guidebook)
Second photo, left: Oracle of Mystical Moments, by Catrin Well-Stein
Second photo, right: Oracle of Visions, by Ciro Marchetti

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I’ve kept adding roughly a page a week to the notebook. Here are some materials and techniques that I’ve used:

1. Magazine, catalog, and other clippings – the cover of my tiny notebook is actually out of a credit card offer, and the ampersand in the photo below is out of a newsletter from my health insurance company.
2. Printouts from the internet – sometimes I look up a specific image that I want (since I’m unlikely to draw it to my satisfaction!), and sometimes an image crosses my path that’s worth hanging on to.
3. Stickers – I especially like letter stickers because I have limited skills with hand-lettering, but any stickers with suitable symbols or messages are welcome.
4. Crayon resist watercolor – write a message in light-colored crayon (assuming you’re using white paper), and then paint over it with very wet watercolor. Makes a mess of neighboring pages but a really nice effect; slide waxed paper underneath the page you’re painting to protect the next ones down. If you can go really wet, put drops of paint onto wet paper and the crayon marks will (imperfectly) contain them as they spread. The photo below is that effect, done on index cards.
5. Sharpie with colored pencil background – the permanent marker will lay down enough color that you can color in the background afterward with just about any colors and still be able to read it.
6. “Crayon resist markers” – this doesn’t really work the same way as with paint, but you can write with crayon and color over it with markers and get a somewhat similar effect.
7. Just writing, but with colorful pens – I have a set of gel pens I’m mildly obsessed with (Pilot G-2 Metallics), so sometimes I just write whatever it is I’m recording with them.
8. Marked-up writing – however your message is recorded, you can underline, circle, put arrows to, or otherwise highlight the key words with doodling.

I keep some newspaper and waxed paper with my art supplies to protect neighboring pages and my desk from my various experiments. None of my art supplies are “artist quality”; most are Crayola products aimed at grade schoolers.

I think my problem before was two pieces: overly high expectations for what I could/should produce, and expecting to just know what to put into the art journal. You see pictures online of people who art journal extensively and they appear to fill two facing pages of a large sketchbook every day with renditions of the thoughts and events of their lives — that’s not going to be me, and I should recognize that! Two-dimensional art has never been my medium, and I’m not going to suddenly know how to draw or paint by magic; I’ve also never maintained a diary for more than two months at a time, so why would it suddenly be easier to maintain one that requires a lot more effort?

For me, art journaling is more about making things that stand out in my mind also stand out on paper – and I don’t have two pages a day of that kind of content.

In fact, for a long time I had very little of that content. I have found, however, that adding “non-art” journaling to my life – which is still not diary-style, and about which more in future posts – has created the contents to put into the art journal. Funny, that – taking time specifically to think about my life has allowed me to articulate the things I want to remind myself of. Kind of a big duh but it was only clear to me in hindsight!

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My craft night standards are strict:

• Anyone has to be able to do the craft successfully, without needing to possess any specific art/craft skills, and even if they are not having a super creative-feeling night.
• Someone who really wants to engage in the craft should be able to do so – nothing so simple that you can’t sink your teeth into it – but no one should *have* to focus tightly on the craft in order to do it. I want people to be able to come and not do the craft and still have a good time.
• The practical restrictions: it has to be doable in an evening, so no lengthy dry time between steps (say), and without any expensive materials or specialized tools. Ideally it should be doable mostly from stash and salvaged materials.
• And finally, the aesthetic considerations: the final product needs to appeal to a wide variety of humans (or have the customizability to do so). Nothing that only fits a certain rustic-crafty decor, for instance.

I thought the decoupaged notebooks were a resounding success, so here’s the lowdown.

Decoupaged Notebooks: Process

Materials On Hand

• Notebooks – I thought I would be able to find plain-brown-cover Moleskine knockoffs all over the place, but that was not true. I ended up with mini composition notebooks (3.25″ x 4.5″) from the dollar store and larger notebooks (4″ x 6″ and 5.75″ x 8.25″) from TJ Maxx. They worked just fine, and in fact having something already on the notebooks made for some fun design options – “the future is” on the largest notebook above was pre-existing printing.
• Magazines, origami paper, and of course scissors – Originally I planned to get out scrapbook paper also, but it was too much. A big stack of magazines, catalogs, and tourism brochures, plus a few varieties of solid origami paper, seemed to be enough options to keep everyone happy. This gives me a whole different selection to provide at a future papercraft night.
• Glue sticks and Mod Podge – I prefer to glue with glue sticks and seal with Mod Podge, just, you know, FYI, but a lot of people glued with Mod Podge and it works fine.
• Foam brushes and a wide-mouthed mason jar with some water in it – the jar for putting used brushes in so they could wait for cleaning (which did not happen until the following day).
• 1/4″-wide ribbon and tacky glue – for bookmarks. Cut a piece of ribbon twice the height of your notebook plus 1-2″ and glue it along the inside back cover, close to the spine, so the excess sticks out at the top. That excess then folds down to be the bookmark, and you can cut a little v-shaped notch in the end to help keep it from fraying.
• Wax paper – to slide inside the covers of your notebook to protect your pages from the glue and Mod Podge. I pre-cut a bunch of pieces and I think that worked well.
• Miscellaneous buttons, beads, and small fabric squares – I had these around so I put them out, but I think one person used some fabric and the rest of the items were untouched.

Setup

We set up a folding table in the living room and spread the magazines and blank notebooks out on it. I covered the dining table with two layers of newspaper and set everything else out there (including the origami paper, so it wouldn’t get lost in the heap of other paper). Things moved between the two tables, but overall I think it was useful to have the separation, and people circulated during the evening depending on what they were working on.

14 people came and roughly half decorated notebooks, with many of those people decorating more than one. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves whether or not they decorated.

Lessons?

I would have started looking for notebooks earlier had I realized how much less available they are than I thought they would be. In particular, I only had 3 of the largest size notebooks, and I would have liked to have more.

I would not bother putting out buttons and beads if I did this again, just save them for a different craft they are better suited to.

I might have done a sample notebook, perhaps in particular a half-finished sample notebook, to leave on the table and demo the use of the wax paper and how to make a bookmark. I didn’t want to be in teacher mode and hover over the tables to give instructions, so that would have helped show some things, but it also wasn’t a real problem to have that information come later or not at all.

This worked really well overall, and there’s nothing significant I would have changed! It was a great choice for Craft Night 1.

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Well, not literally; I trimmed the edges this morning. But essentially.

Just a lark, slopped together with lots of mod podge and minimal care. I intend to make more collages in the future, though, so I thought I’d record what went well here and what I would change if I were doing a collage like this to be a serious piece.

The Good:

• I laid my sketch pad paper out on waxed paper and glued magazine clippings off the edge. The waxed paper meant I could turn it over and see the edges for trimming this morning without having to try to peel it off in advance.
• I had tons and tons of the little clippings. I kept cutting them even though I was sure I would end up with something like twice as many as I needed. Nope, I needed all of them.
• I saved out one of each version of the key to make sure they were all represented on the top layer.

The Not So Good:

• I couldn’t get a sweet spot between too much and not enough Mod Podge in its role as adhesive. If it was a thick enough layer not to dry immediately it wrinkled the paper and made it translucent. If I were doing this “for real,” I would … well, I’d be a lot more careful in a lot of ways! But in particular, I wouldn’t use Mod Podge as the primary adhesive. Instead, I’d use a glue stick to attach one round of clippings (probably over half) with minimal overlap but hopefully good coverage. Then I would dab on a thin layer of Mod Podge, covering the whole page, and let it dry. Intermediate layers of Mod Podge should mean I wouldn’t have to worry about making sure the glue stick was all the way out to the corners of every clipping. Repeat with the rest of the non-reserved clippings, and finally with the reserved clippings. Then probably one more layer of Mod Podge, thicker now because the previous coatings should protect the paper from wrinkling.

Quite a bit gained from following that moment of silly inspiration!

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It started with the silver notebook. I got it for free at work but it had a big ol’ vendor logo across the front. I wanted to cover it, and pulled out a magazine clipping from my stash – but my Mod Podge was nowhere to be found (it probably dried up). After procuring new Podge, I covered that, but then thought, “what other notebooks could I decorate?”

I wasn’t so keen on the tan plaid notebook to begin with; it came in a set. The chickens, from the back cover of a calendar, dress it up nicely, despite one likely being 90 degrees incorrectly positioned. The gopher-y creature was the front of a birthday card received from my parents years ago. I liked that notebook fine, but the whole back cover still has the zig-zag lines so there’s no real loss.

At that point I thought my supply had dried up – my remaining notebooks were too attractive to decoupage some random paper onto. Then I had a meeting and took the pinkish notebook – and realized I’d been using it for two years and was only maybe 1/4 through. Boring! Addition time. I do wish I’d trimmed out some of the white between the leaves near the bottom of the image, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Decoupage: highly recommended for instant gratification.

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In 2012 I cut out triangles of paper to glue together into a dodecahexaflexagon (documented in a post about a smaller flexagon). I also found instructions: scanned typed instructions from David Pleacher, and instructions incorporating triangle orientation from Kathryn Huxtable.

A dodecahexaflexagon is a 12-faced (the dodeca-, as you will know if you’ve read The Phantom Tollbooth, or been a long-time reader of this blog), 6-sided (hexa-) flexagon; each face is made from 6 equilateral triangles. I had cut each face from a different scrapbook paper, and I had small squares of white paper to serve as hinges.

In the summer of 2014 I dug out the paper pieces and started gluing them together. I glued one side of the strip together in an evening, but didn’t get back to the other side until now. The second side was quite easy, since on side 1 the faces were scattered around and on side two they were much more orderly.

There was some confusion in the folding and a length of time before I found all 12 faces. I didn’t know the trick! To flex, you’ll pinch the hexagon so that three of the lines between triangles are outward corners and three are inward corners (see photo below). Which edges are inward and which outward will change which face you see next (in some cases you’ll only be able to flex in one configuration). To see all of them, you can simply pinch out the same corner over and over again, only rotating to a neighboring corner if it is impossible to flex the first one. I found hanging on to the same pair of faces with one hand, doing the rest of the work with the other, was the best way to enact that. It is awkwardly thick and I’m glad I spaced the triangles apart a bit with the paper squares.

Each face is connected to at least two additional faces. I haven’t explored thoroughly enough to know whether I found the full set of options, but I made a little map and had each face connected to 2, 4, or 6 others, with complicated interconnection. This lines up with a diagram on Kathryn Huxtable’s general flexagon page, where I also learned about the “pinch one corner repeatedly” method of finding all the faces.

Want more flexagons? Harold McIntosh has an interesting read about the history and theory of flexagons, and Vi Hart’s videos and more (the first of which inspired my flexagon crafting) are all on a hexaflexagon page of puzzles.com. Woolly Thoughts, a bastion of mathematics-inspired crafting, has a page of crochet and knit flexagon cushions.

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The main way was for patterns to stitch through, whether by machine or by hand. For the sample embroidered seam block I made for my second crazy quilting class, I used strips of tracing paper to make evenly-spaced repeating stitch patterns from my graph paper sketches. It was a mixed blessing – the stitching creates the perforations to tear along to remove the paper, so shorter stitches = easier removal. Mine were long and tearing the paper without stressing the stitches was a challenge. I also had trouble with the stitches getting loose when I tore away the paper and had to consciously stitch more tightly than I normally would to accommodate it. One piece of advice unrelated to my block: don’t fill areas while the tracing paper is still attached because you will never get it out.

Advice from elsewhere: Susan at Plays with Needles recommends Bienfang brand tracing paper in particular. I’ve only tried what I have – Strathmore – and it’s fine, but takes a little effort to sew through. I’ll test out Bienfang when I need a refill. If it’s easier to tear that will help a lot with avoiding stitch distortion.

I also printed a large letter to be used as an applique pattern. I put tracing paper through the printer by trimming it to about 8″x10.5″ and taping it across the top to a standard sheet of letter paper, an idea I got from a tutorial for decorating candles with printed tissue paper. I generally use a small piece of tape at each end of the short edge and two more equally spaced in between.

Advice here: if you’re printing large solid letters and don’t have a way to convert them to outline, change them to a nice medium gray. Then you use less ink, which means less time to dry and less distortion from soaking the paper. For my applique I straight-stitched by machine around the outline of the letter, removed the paper and trimmed the applique fabric as close as possible to the stitch line, and then made a tight, narrow zigzag all the way around. In one spot my trimming was a little too close and I had to recapture the fabric with the zigzag, but most of it went as planned.

[This pattern was for a gift for friends we see very infrequently, and in fact we passed it to a mutual friend and it may not even have made it to them yet, but I am tired of holding on to this post until the gift is given!]

Incidentally, the letter shown is Oleo Script Swash Caps, a font that’s free for commercial use. The designer also has the plainer Oleo Script, but I specifically wanted an E with loops in it. Both are thick enough that at a large size you don’t even need boldface to make a good applique letter.

My second recent use for tracing paper was to make my own rub-on transfer. I was drawing a greeting card and had a little fuzzball character that I didn’t trust to come out as well in future versions, so I traced him with a soft pencil (4B), turned the tracing over, and rubbed with the (eraserless) back end of the pencil to transfer graphite. Then I went back with a colored pencil to finish the drawing. It worked really well, and I was even able to face him in opposite directions by turning the tracing paper over, using the first trace as an image to trace again, and rubbing the second version onto the page. In the photo, where I’ve transferred but not drawn over the image, you can see where the first version rubbed onto the scratch paper a bit, ghostly under the tracing paper (which itself is not easy to see).

By the way, as I focus less on blogging I’ve found myself using Facebook a bit more, mostly for random crafty links I come across (though the Fun With Vintage Patterns album gradually grows). I’m not regular with it, but moreso than here.

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That cover is two sheets of pearly scrapbook paper cut to size, with the diecuts in the top layer made with my Cricut machine. You can see a strip of elastic – my previous pen holder was a pocket that hung onto the front of the planner with two elastic loops. It’s been a while since I switched to the binder and I only just finished my new pen holder. Meanwhile I got used to taking out the current planner page and sliding it under the elastic on the outside of the binder, so when I replaced the pocket I turned one of its elastics into a separate loop.

Here’s the new pouch! It’s basically two flat pieces, each double-sided, one with a zipper and the other with a layer of heavy interfacing and some ribbon loops. It didn’t come out well enough to be worth sharing a pattern for, but I’m happy with it. The striped dividers are more scrapbook paper, cut to 8.5″x5.75″ so they stick out a bit.

And finally, here’s a highlights reel of my binder’s contents, so I can share the sources of my printables.

• year on 2 pages (Scattered Squirrel)
• One Little Word focus matrix (The Project Girl)
• monthly calendars: one month per page (Scattered Squirrel)
• weekly calendars: week on two facing pages (Scattered Squirrel)
• four sheets of address book (About.com)

Oh, and you may be thinking, “if her previous planner didn’t fit in her purse, there’s no way this one does!” You’re right. I got a little staple-bound two-year monthly planner to use for that. It is full of silly animal pictures.

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Midstream materials report: I’ve been using drawing pencils I’d purchased some time ago, Staedtler Mars Lumographs. The images above (from lessons 1-5) were drawn with a 4B and those below (6-10) with a 2B. I like the variety of shades of the 4B but prefer how much longer the 2B keeps its point, so I plan to try out a 3B to see if it’s a good compromise.

I started out with a Paper Mate White Pearl eraser, which worked okay (it’s perfect on the rougher/cheaper paper of Games Magazine, by the way), but bought some others at the art store to try, along with some blending stumps, though I haven’t used those much. The Faber-Castell PVC-Free eraser was okay, but kind of plasticky. I’ve been very happy with the Staedtler Mars Plastic, though. It erases really well. Of course it’s probably designed to work well with my Staedtler pencils. I also have a Prismacolor Kneaded Rubber eraser, but I haven’t used it yet. I’ll probably try to preserve it for fine erasing and use the Staedtler for anything that doesn’t require precision.

The vegetables were drawn with plain old Crayola Twistables colored pencils, which are terrific to get some variety of color without so much it that becomes paralyzing. This set has red, red-orange, orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, sky blue, blue, violet, light brown, brown, and black. I have a book called “Draw Cute Animals in Colored Pencil” coming soon, so they will get more use.

When I made my felted pencil bag I thought it was probably overkill size-wise, but with 16 pencils, 2 erasers, 2 stumps and a stump cleaning paddle, it’s pretty well full.

I spent a total of 22 drawing sessions on those ten lessons (including one for the “pretest”), plus 5 sidetracks in the midst of them (and 9 sessions prior to starting the book). At the present rate it’ll be 30 weeks rather than 30 days; that’s fine, I’m learning patience in addition to drawing. Originally I thought a year of drawing might be adequate to get me where I wanted to be, but now I’ll be pleased if it’s merely two years. I’m certainly much more confident than I was, and (I think) also much better – or at least my quality is more reliable. My approach is different and in particular more measured. However, a year just isn’t a long time when it comes to learning a new skill of any depth (duh). After I finish this book I’ll have a lot of work left to learn shading, which is addressed but not at all thoroughly, and facial expressions, which certainly aren’t part of the curriculum. Shading in particular could easily take another 30 weeks to feel confident about.

I think Lesson 7’s bonus challenge (crazy geometric buildings) and the warmup to Lesson 8 (fuzzy, spiky, and wooly balls) were my favorite parts of 1-10, the former because it felt like I was successfully drawing something “real,” and the latter because I thought they turned out really well.

I’ve improved enough that I don’t have to force myself to continue. I regularly have trouble fitting drawing into my day, but it’s rewarding even at the frequency with which I do it. One realization I had at about lesson 8, seeing my husband drawing with friends, is that my lack of drawing skills was a hindrance to me enjoying the activity (in contrast to, say, my lack of bowling skills), and I certainly don’t have to be Rembrandt to get past that problem. I don’t know that I’m quite there yet – I’m still pretty self-conscious about the act of drawing – but it shouldn’t be long.

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Book 1: For Rank Beginners

My loving sister, after conversing one night with a very frustrated me, ordered me a copy of You Can Draw In 30 Days, whose author, Mark Kistler, had (has?) a long-running PBS drawing show. After two lessons I was confident enough to draw my father’s birthday card, the first drawn greeting card of my adult life. Shading is where this book has been outstanding so far. Though I need a lot of practice with them, I already knew the principles that higher, smaller shapes overlapped by others look further away. His simple approach to “nook and cranny” shadows and the shadow that seats the image on the “ground,” on the other hand, was a revelation. I’m going slowly through the book; I’ve done four sessions with it, but finishing Lesson 3 and its bonus challenge may take up to 3 more.

My New Year’s resolution was to draw three times a week. After a disappointing start with an online course that was bald-facedly lying when it said it was for all levels, I dropped off for two weeks or so. I’m getting back on track by doing four drawings a week (which should have me caught up with where I would have been had I kept up 3/week around the end of March), but I wouldn’t be surprised if this book takes me over three months to finish. Especially if I take more breaks to draw non-lessons.

Anyway, there’s not guarantee you’ll like this book as much as I do, but if you find yourself feeling like drawing lessons are telling you what to do without telling you how to do it, try it out.

Book 2: Drawing Animals

I ordered a drawing book published by Dover because it was incredibly inexpensive and gets great reviews on Amazon. It’s called The Art of Animal Drawing, and it’s a 1950 book by Disney animator Ken Hultgren. The subtitle is “Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature,” which also caught my eye.

I’m nowhere near ready to use it, but he goes through some general principles and then talks more specifically about different kinds of animals. Nothing too exotic, and come to think of it no birds or sea creatures (maybe that’s not what he means by “animal”), but he covers all the standard non-bird farm animals, dogs, cats, rabbits, and significant wild animals: big cats, bears, camels, hippos, foxes, kangaroos, elephants, a few others.

There are two particularly neat things about the book. One is the caricature aspect: for each kind of animal, he discusses what traits to exaggerate for caricature and gives some examples. The other is that he shows his preliminary sketches, which are often just as beautiful as – though much more abstract than – the finished drawings. They remind me of Franz Marc, in fact, and since I aspire to be able to draw some Franz-Marc-esque pieces, that’s exciting. They’re almost architectural. You can see how he draws long smooth arcs connecting body parts that aren’t connected in the finished drawing, but the line gives cohesion to the motion of the body or the composition of the drawing. There was one drawing of two cats, the front one with its head toward the ground, the back one with one leg forward, and the arc of the back one’s back to leg was nearly parallel to the arc of the front one’s back to head, though both arcs were interrupted in the final drawing (by head and shoulder blades, respectively). I expect that once I can somewhat draw animals, this book will really help me improve.

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