July 2013 Mandala a Day Pages

Completed July 2013 Spread (right)

Completed July 2013 Spread (left)

Mandalas drawn with Sharpie Pens, Gelly Roll Metallic Pens,
Office Max Metallic Markers, Tombo Markers, Pitt Pens

Here is my July 2013 Mandala a Day calendar spread.  I must confess that sometimes I've had to play

catch up to keep somewhat up to date.  I've always doodled mandalas like these but have rarely used

them as part of my art creations, so it feels good to acknowledge their importance to me.  I'm part of 

Dion Dior's Wisdom Circles group on facebook and appreciate how she honors the mandala in art.

I think the thing I've learned the most by making mandalas as art on my July calendar is how

to begin to make my favorite pens work together.  I love my sparkly Gelly Roll Metallic Pens but

not all of my usual pens want to write and draw over them.  So here is what seems to work: draw

the basic mandala with the Sharpie Pen (I've got a range of colors) and then next with the Tombos 

and add sparkle with the Gelly Roll Pens.  Tough to use a brush with Twinks (Twinkling H20s) and

Silks (acrylic glaze with mica added) since the mandalas on this page are size limited. I'll post a

picture with all my mandalas completed at the end of the month.  

My birthday month has been pretty good except it's been too hot in Colorado!  As a birthday gift

to myself I got my car's air conditioning fixed--oh happy day!  Started teaching at an additional 

technical college mid-month and have been paying my time and attention to Soul Collage.  It is

really a healing process!  I'll blog about that sometime this week.  Getting excited about my August

calendar spread.  Going to do pages like Georgia O'Keeffe Traveling Above, Looking Below cloud

painting that I often used to visit at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I'm going to attempt to record a

dream each day in the cloud/day shapes.  What image or idea are you going to play with in August?

July 2013 Art Journal Calendar Pages

This is my July 2013 calendar page.  I've committed to creating a calendar page spread for each month for the rest of the year.  This is only my second month.  I did want to do something with stars and stripes but did not want to do the traditional red, white, blue.  I settled on a sky blue with dark pink days.  I colored the star background and the banner strips with Reeves Water Soluble Crayons, a set I just picked up last week.

I scribbled on the color and then used a damp sponge to spread the color around.  I like that it looks like the sky.  I intended to use a guide to draw on consistently shaped stars and then paint them in white.  When I made a tracing error I erased it with a white eraser and found that the eraser erased the background color as well.  I kind of liked the ghostly, cloud-like star gotten by erasing within the lines.

I next used a hand-me-down banner stencil to make the days.  I originally intended for the banner to be continuous but later decided on cutting the banner into random rectangles for the days.  Took me a while to arrange the days coherently but found that they eventually looked right as I puzzled with them.

I decorated each day with Martha Stewart makers, Pitt and Micron Pens, Sakura Metallic Gel Pens.

I've decided to do a mandala doodle a day this month.  Really like the idea of my calendar page spreads helping me to know more surely when I made or completed each page in each journal.