My garden calendar says that sometime in the next two weeks, I’m going to start planting cool weather crops. I have a little construction to do first, because the trellis I built for the peas last year is really too short. I’ll be sad to take it down, but I have an idea for one that arches over the pathways, which will look sort of cool, and make better use of the space.

Anyway, in the next couple of days, I’ll be finishing off the last two sets of pages in this little journal, and send it on its way to New York, where it will join hundreds of others. I’ll be both sad and relieved to see it go—and I’ll also have to find myself another journaling project before Friday’s art journal meeting. What’s next? I have several different journals on the work table, but I’m not sure which one to dive into first.

Look at me. I’m finally an art journaler. Sort of.

Tonight is this year’s first meeting of my local art group, and at my suggestion, it’s a UFO night. Everyone is supposed to bring a project that’s been sitting around, unfinished—and finish it. I have so many unfinished objects to choose from, it’s going to be hard to pick one. Altered bottles that have been taking up space, mocking me, for a good six months? My Crush book, I started two years ago, and just haven’t been able to find time to work on? The magazine journal that I started before Christmas, that’s been sitting on my desk ever since? Hmm…

I’m still hacking away at my book for The Sketchbook Project. I have three, count ‘em, three, sets of pages left to letter and seal, and two weeks left to get them done. I’m hoping one set will be done before I leave for the meeting tonight. I’m SO ready for this book to be done and out of my life. I’ve enjoyed doing it, but it’s time to move on to something else!

It’s not done yet, so obviously, I haven’t sent it. So much for finishing it as my first achievement of 2012. I mailed off a piece of artwork for another project instead.

The good news is that I realized I have until January 31st to get a postmark on my package. I have TONS of time left. So I’m still ahead of the deadline. See what I did there? I didn’t miss a deadline—I’m ahead of one. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…

Meanwhile, I’m finishing up the last of six sample books for my Wall Books class. I’ve really enjoyed making them. Putting together online classes has become a great excuse to make a whole bunch of something I like making. I see more classes in my future!

I did this piece for a swap on FreakWerx, which has reformed itself on Facebook. I haven’t swapped much this year. I just don’t have the time to organize projects, and I’m wary of joining projects hosted by others. I’m sad to see my perpetual swapping and round robin-ing fall by the wayside, but perhaps it’s just time for that part of my creative life to take a back seat to other things.

On the plus side, this is the 54th Weekly Thing post of this year, which means I more or less did keep up with the idea of making something to talk about every week. Although, just as it has been for the last six years, one my creative resolutions for 2012 is still to make more time for personal artwork, I feel like I’m finally doing a little better at managing that aspect of my life. Perhaps it’s due to spending less time on work for swaps and exchanges, and more on work that helps me stretch—like starting the year with art journaling classes on the Strathmore site, which I’m doing again this year. Perhaps it’s because I’m starting to develop online classes, which are based on the type of work I do when left to my own devices, and give me the extra financial boost I need to allow myself more time away from doing things for Ten Two Studios.

Anyway, here’s my commitment to maintain this weekly creative blog for yet another year. One thing a week, whether it’s personal artwork, photography, or collaborative project work. Onward to 2012!

I’ve spent today adding lettering to pages in my book for The Sketchbook Project. It’s getting done, little by little. I’ll be glad to see it boxed up and gone. I’m hoping I can do that on January 1st, to sort of start the year by finishing something. That has to be some sort of good omen, right?

So, the cover. I left it to almost last, because I wasn’t sure if I’d need some sort of closure. I decided against, played with a few things, and then settled on some plain black stenciled lettering. And it was boring. So I picked up my favorite ultra-fine pen, and started adding swirls. And it was better. Then I added some white dots. OK, good. Then, I swiped some sealer over the whole thing—and all the swirls disappeared, because my favorite pen was not permanent on and already sealed cover. Dammit! I grabbed a brush marker, redid all the swirls, and the heavier, darker lines made the lettering almost disappear. Cool. Done is beautiful.

I also left the first set of pages in the book blank, knowing I wanted to go back and add something that introduced the book—and also knowing that I should never, ever do that kind of page before the book is finished, because as much as I think I know what a book is going to be about, things change over the course of so many months. The idea I had for these pages stayed pretty much the same as my original one. I used a photo of my house taken on the day I bought it, and a couple from this spring, before the heat wave hit. I can’t help but feel just a little proud of the transformation I’ve made in the front of the house. It looks so very different than it did eleven years ago.

Speaking of which, I spent all day yesterday in the garden, cleaning and mowing and edging. And weeding. Oh, the weeding. Some scourge has sprouted all over the place, and is in every flower bed, gravel path, and between all the pavers on the paths. It sucks. It’s been raining a lot here over the past week or so, which is always a good thing, but especially good right now, because we are so low on rain for the year. However, it’s not good for the weedy scourge, which was growing so large in some areas that I could see the wind rippling through it. So I mowed a bunch of it down yesterday. In December. And I was not the only nut job in the neighborhood mowing.

The weather here. It’s messed up…

Those of you who have been following me that long know that I’ve been renovating my house since before I moved into it. The ink wasn’t even dry on the paperwork before I started buying tile for the kitchen, which took me two years of tearing back to the studs, rewiring, and rebuilding to finish. And I use the word finish very loosely, because recently, I found myself staring at the back wall, thinking I should move the island to sit against it, and extend it to create a…wait, I’m getting off track…

When I left my last real job to start Ten Two Studios six years ago, I had just finished moving all the stuff in my office into the master bedroom, thinking I was going to do a quick paint and reflooring job, and move back into it. At the time, using the smallest of the three bedrooms as my office made sense, because I basically used it to play on the computer, print things for my artwork, and occasionally worked at home.

Starting my own business and working at home full time changed everything, and so, my simple little renovation came to a grinding halt. For a while, I thought I’d simply drop in some new wiring for the power-sucking printers and computer equipment, and continue to use the little bedroom as the office. At some point, I realized that using the smallest room in the house as the room in which I spend the most time every day was, well, stupid. I hatched a plan to turn the master bedroom into my office and kit-packing space, so I could stop dragging kit supplies into the living room, where I could watch TV while I worked.

One of the down sides of being my own business is that very often, when I have the time to do home improvement projects, I either don’t have the dollars because business is slow, or don’t have the energy, because I’m taking a few days off after a particularly hectic period. The home improvement progress has slowed to a halt in the past few years. And so, I’ve been working in my half-gutted bedroom for six years, crammed into temporary space that’s less than prime, and using portions of the living room, dining room, and studio for the overflow. It’s ugly.

Last spring, I finally decided enough was enough, and got down to business. The little bedroom, which is now slated to be my bedroom, was a disaster. It was previously a baby’s room, complete with pink and blue wallpaper from hip down, and horrible stenciled bunnies across the beam. Under the baby wallpaper was a liner. Under that was fake grass cloth vinyl wallpaper. Under that, another liner. Under that, ugly pinky-beige paint. I scraped, wiped and peeled my way down to ugly paint for about a week. I moved the ceiling fixture box to make space for a small overhead fan. I filled holes left from the installation of the new electrical box, and from forty years of hanging things on the walls. I patched ceiling cracks—and then repatched them. I cussed a lot.

And then came summer, when it’s honestly too hot to move, let alone climb up a ladder and use power tools. I foolishly thought I’d get paint and flooring done this summer, and do trim and furniture in the fall. That didn’t happen.

Last week, I got a wild hair, and went ahead and ordered a storage bed I’d had my eye on for a while. I was on sale, and I got a free shipping deal—and it will be here Wednesday. I will now have two large boxes of bed parts laying in the middle of the living room until I finish preparing the bedroom. Incentive to finish the damned thing once and for all? I think so!

Yesterday, I started conquering the ugliest remaining job: installing bead board panels on the ceiling, to cover the too-cracked-to-repair sheet rock once and for all. Me installing masonite panels on a sloped ceiling by myself is, well, not pretty. It involves hammering very tiny nails, over my head, at an angle. My left thumb has a decidedly purple tinge to it this morning. However, I got half of it finished yesterday, it looks great, and I think I can finish the other half tomorrow. That leaves paint and flooring before I can move the bed in.

Perhaps I will be a grown-up, and have a real bedroom before the end of the year. With furniture that matches, and storage for all my clothes—and no work stuff in it. Pass me that hammer…

Today begins that season which keeps me at home, far away from other people. I loathe the holiday shopping frenzy. Three years of working holidays in a craft store will cure you of any idea that the human race is good and kind. It brings out the worst in a lot of people. I refuse to participate in the whole Black Friday routine. There’s nothing anybody needs badly enough to get trampled, or, according to this morning’s news, pepper sprayed. I contributed to the economy by buying a new television last week, to replace one that I was given in 1990, and another that I bought when I moved into this house in 2000, and has been stuck on DVD for three years. That’s it. I’m out.

Tonight is art journaling night with my local group. Even though it’s a holiday weekend, we still have a small group of diehards attending, myself included. I have to run outside and take a few photos, and prep some pages with them this afternoon. I’m hoping that after tonight, all the pages in my Sketchbook Project book will have work on them. Between now and Christmas, I’ll do lettering and finishing. This morning, I did a round of Dorland’s wax on all the pages I’ve finished in the past few weeks. The number of pages with waxed paper between them to keep unsealed acrylics from sticking together is dwindling to a very few.

I’m also gearing up to start prepping another online class. My first one went really well, and I got some good input from the blind class evaluation forms. I think the next one is going to be a da Vinci themed book, with lots of interactive things going on inside. In a workroom filled with books waiting to be altered, the hold up is—having two books that are a normal size that everyone can find. I have tons of odd books tucked away for altering—tall, skinny, tiny, fat, huge, whatever—but none that are, say, the size of your basic hardcover novel. I was tempted to go to Half Price Books today, and use the 40% off coupon they emailed me, but I think I’ll stay home, and buy a couple of $3. clearance books on Monday instead…

The period between Halloween and Christmas is always brutal for me. I love Halloween so much that I continue to design products right up until the end of October—and then, November 1st, I realize I’ve done nothing about Christmas, at the very time when people who like to make things are ready to tackle it for real. Yes, there are a lot of folks who start buying Christmas things in July, and every year, when those orders start coming in, I think gee, I should be planning new Christmas things. But then, I look at the calendar, and see October, and all thoughts of Christmas go right out of my head. I admit it: I have the attention span of a four year old.

Anyway, we are now smack in the middle of the scramble to catch up, and make Christmas things. I have so many projects going right now, I’m running out of horizontal work space. I have things going in my office, studio, dining room, kitchen and living room. I had to move furniture around in the office this week so I have more room to work. My house looks like a bomb went off in it. A big, glittery, red and green Christmas bomb…

Meanwhile, we’re experiencing yet another wave of Indian summer. The weather is unseasonably warm. I have little weedlings sprouting up in every corner of the garden. I had to take an afternoon off this week to mow the backyard, which should have gone dormant by now. Next week, it’s the front yard, which is also infested with tiny weed sprouts. It’s crazy.

I am determined to finish my book for The Sketchbook Project by Christmas. We have two more fourth Friday art journaling sessions scheduled at my local group—one is the day after Thanksgiving, and one is two days before Christmas. I’m thinking both meetings will be small and quiet, so I’ll be able to get a lot of work done. I’m SO close—three sets of unworked pages, and a few more that just need lettering and a little finishing. I can do this!

This week, I started playing with magazine pages and gesso. I’m not sure what I’m making yet. Some sort of journal thing, if it stays together long enough for me to keep working in it. Since it’s basically ripped up magazines, some gesso, and a little paint, I won’t be too heartbroken if it doesn’t work.

I’m determined that I’ll finish my journal for The Sketchbook Project by Christmas. I have three sets of unworked pages left, plus some lettering and finishing on about half a dozen others. The same folks who organize this project sent out an email this week looking for folks to do another journal project, due in April. I thought about it long and hard, and then passed. I’ve enjoyed working on the one I have, but I think I want to focus on some journal work that stays home before I dive into another project that goes away when it’s finished.