A Lovely Dream

Paint & Chronicle

*Registration for his class has ended.  Stay tuned for the DVD offering the best of the class and art supplies that come with it and sent to your door!

PAINT & CHRONICLE

 Art Journal Workshop with Suzi Blu 

If you are like me you have had many journals going on at one time but a strong desire for ONE beautiful fat journal ONE BOOK THAT RULES THEM ALL! Well here it is. It is fine art. It is scrapbooking. It's planning your life the way you really want it to be. And not just a class but a community where we will explore our daily lives, hidden thoughts, health, and inner emotions. The beauty is, we are going to do this all-in-one fat beautiful journal. Paint and Chronicle!

PAINT & CHRONICLE IS AN ONGOING COMMUNITY!
The more months you sign up for, the more you save!

 

Prompts! PDFs and Videos! Community!

Ok great, you can make a background page. Hurray. You can doodle and collage and know the formula for the latest style. But answer me this, do your art journals really mean anything to you?  Do your pretty pages feel flat, random even? Would you like more soulful, meaningful pages?

Included in this class is Access to the one year of monthly painted art
journal page videos from my workshop A Lovely Dream.

Asphyxia says:
"Overall I'm finding this process very enjoyable, and I'm definitely moving forward with my goals in a way that I wasn't before.  The process of identifying what I needed to do to make my life  better and take charge of everything, and then breaking it down into small steps and creating a planner page based on that, has been fantastic.  Also I love my journal - the colours, the artworks, the pretty things.  It makes me WANT to stay on track!"
Visit her blog at Fixiefoo.typepad.com

Julia Lee-Kim says:

"Creating change... it's not easy, in fact its down right hard. However, Suzi has tickled my creative side to not only chronicle my daily life, but to dig deeper in order realize my authentic self. Baby steps is what she advocates... and I have to say its definitely working. I was never one to really keep a written or artistic journal, much less a scrap book. But being a part of a community of like minded souls and having lived this process for a few months now, I've definitely seen changes for the better. The cherry on top is having these monthly end products that are fab eye candy!"
Visit Julia at - JuliasBento.blogspot.com

General Supplies

Journal -Cheapie or expensive, handmade (I teach you how) or already bound, its up to you. I've been through many since I started this class and if you work in yours, so will you.
Scrapbook papers - Especially the scraps you have left over, perfect for journaling.
Pens - Cheapie, alcohol markers, gel pens
Colored Pencils - Prismacolor are the best for shading flawless faces but for journaling many different types of colored pencils will work.
Water Soluble oil pastels and crayons - Like Caran d-ACHE and Portfolio
Watercolor Paper - if you work in a cheap sketchbook not meant for wet media then adding in papers only when you want to paint on them is the way to go.
Acrylic Paints - Any, but I prefer Golden Fluid Acrylics
Matte Medium - is the best non sticky fast drying glue for papers.

Join us today!

xoxo Suzi Blu

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You and me together, we can do anything baby

Paint & Chronicle

There's Nothing Like Your Baritone

 

This painted page is from my monthly online Journal Workshop called A Lovely Dream.  Watch the making of this painting in real time with step by step commentary by me by joining my class. New videos every single month.
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It all started with a pretty little song by Death Cab For Cutie called Soul Meets Body and the lyrics:

  you're the only song I want to hear. 

Which could be about romance but also about loosing my dad, which, even though I really set out to make a happy journal page, I'm still plagued to live out in my art it seems.  I want to hear my dad's voice more than I've wanted to hear anything in my life.  Even if it was him fighting with mom, or talking to the Fox News Channel, or lecturing me on paying attention to my bookkeeping, all the things that I thought built a wedge between us I would gladly endure just to hear the sweetest sound, his voice.
 
For sure. It sucks. You think you kow but you don't know. Because you will miss everything about them. Even the uncomfortable conversations. Even the fights. I have never longed to hear someones voice as I long to hear his right now.

  I am in a coffee shop in Minneapolis sucking on a mocha my butt in a high wooden chair, my feet dangling above the ground. Jason leaves to go to the restroom and I eye a man in the corner of the room. About 70. He's looking at a laptop in front of him , buds in his ears. I picture this as my dad if dad left the house more. If he were younger and not sick he'd have ordered an expresso and read recovery books. There were no coffee shops when he went to AA. only diners. He would have loved coffee shops and AA life.

  Jasons a quick pee-er and isn't gone long but in that time I cry. Grieving in public is a phenomena I haven't known before. I can sob hard and deep internally inside my chest and only a small tear will shed. And I can shut it off on a dime when someone comes back.

It's as if every 70 year old man is my father. But their voice is not his voice.

"A scratching voice all alone is nothing like your baritone." Ed Vedder

I keep going back and forth to what tattoo I want for my birthday. At first I thought it was the simple:
A  L  I  V  E
to remind myself that I am. Then I thought I'd get an elaborate thing on my chest right below my neck that says:

The Wound Is The Place Where Light Enters - Rumi
so everyone walking towards me could have hope. But now I don't know.

 

 

This is my place. The walls are thick and I can't hear neighbors or the highway. It's the first consistent silence I've had since he died. Right now I am curled up against the wall sitting on a purple floor cushion, knees up and notebook on my lap.  I am far away from everything I have ever known, but there is no way back. My family home is empty. The only things to remain there are ghosts.

A Lovely Day To Art Journal

 

June is lovely lovely. Probably wherever you are.

Want to see this journal page created from start to finish, in real time? Join my Art Journal Community and make pages like this all year long. A new project and inspiration for your page every single month. And of course I let you download the videos so they are on your computer for you to have forever. Join today and recieve all the past videos and journal pages I have been making since September 2011!

Sure I'm Sober Sure I'm Sane

Yup.
Not so hard to stay sober really. Just never leave the house. I need to start meetings again for sure because things like anniversaries aren't a lot of fun. Instead of an accomplishment you think instead about what you felt that day you got drrunk last and how terrible you felt right before the shot hit the back of your throat. The reasons you had for drinking that night and why you drank so much. And those reasons are still there. The feelings you will take with you forever. You may work through them, you may not feel them all the time but they will always be there. Just there, laying next to your dna.

So I need to get to a meeting.  It's on my to do list. Get back into being grateful for being sober and remembering that not being will be really bad. Cause you forget about that when the years wrack up.

So no congratulations necessary. I've simply been too busy to get into trouble. If I don't start doing the things I need to be doing, though, trouble will surely find me.  It always does.

Journal Page from my class A Lovely Dream

 

Something Something and Googie

I know I haven't been here and I hope you understand why. The book. 6 months.  It's over now. Manuscript sent in. It's up to the editors to do what they may. My work is done.  And that is entirely why I came to california. To meet those that be and who could make this thing real. Whatever this thing is I've created, put it on the page and get it out there in a real way. So that is done. I can now cross that off the list.

1. Publish Mixed Media Girls Book.

   I can now go home.
   I promise to never leave you again.

Because you see, this, this thing here, is more important to me than anything.  And its kind of weird now and I thought ruined.  How different it was when I didn't hesitate to write, when I didn't think who was reading and if I wasn't going to come across as positive or brilliant on any particular day.  So even when I could write I wouldn't cause. Well, googie will get me, but does anyone else? I'll post on facebook and be dramatic like OMG IM GONNA KILL MYSELF IF I HAVE TO DO BLAH BLAH ONE MORE TIME and I'm lectured about how I shouldn't throw that phrase around.  There are entirely too many cooks in my kitchen. 

But rather than disappear I'll do the opposite. I'll be here.  Maybe I'll hault comments to make it feel like the old days when I had five live journal friends and I was singing secrets to no one.


I have something new something big planned. Something not like what I've been doing. A whole new something. I don't want to tell you yet because I want to do it properly.  Dogs and I leave Monday morning and fly back to jersey. Once I get settled I will begin and then I can tell you about it. Just a few more weeks. Something big and something no one else is doing right now.  I need change.  I feel like I've done it to death and now its time for a whole new everything. (could I be more vague?) Just wait, I want to present it to you in a fabulous way.  I am hoping it will create a very big something.

a whole big something as big as Gigi's hair.

Googie flys in tonight.
I will post again tomorrow.
and the next day.
and the next.
xxx