Introducing Flora (the new journal)

Let me introduce you to Flora, my current journal. She's a big girl measuring a little over 8x11 inches.

She's had a bit of a rough start. Here's how that happened:

About a year and a half ago I bought this big Dylusions journal at the Kreadoe art supply fair that I attend every year. I intended to use it as a journal sometime in the future, but after sitting in my cupboard for a year I still hadn't used it.

Then I became interested in botanical drawings and flowers and thought: why not use this journal just for drawing, doodling and making art about flowers and trees? So that's what I decided to do and the sketchbook was named 'Flora' to represent its subject of the plant world.

Well...that didn't go well. I did do a few things in it and decorated the cover, but somehow it just didn't take off the way I hoped it would. Putting too many expectations on a sketchbook is never a good thing for me and then I start to avoid it. So Flora was abandoned again.

Then last june I had this idea of seperating the visual journal from the written journal for a while and to use Flora as my visual journal while I wrote in a notebook. Guess how many pages that produced?....Exactly one! So...not a good idea probably and again Flora sat on the shelves.

Me and my big ideas! Sigh...

With all these false starts I felt kind of bad for the poor book. I know, I must be a little crazy to have 'feelings'  for books, but when I use a journal they become steady companions over a period of time and with Flora I felt like a disloyal treacherous 'friend'. This is a beautiful sketchbook/journal and it just felt wasteful not to use it.

So when I finished the Book of Luck and had to pick a new journal I decided to move on with Flora and I must say...so far so good! It does mean that the first few spreads in this book are from months ago, but we'll just call that part of her special history. ;-)

Anyway, after this long intro, here are the first pages from Flora, my current journal:

Not all of the above is fully finished. I still intend to decorate the envelope on the inside cover and I also want to do a background on the wraith spread. When those things are done I'll of course show them to you.

In any case I am glad Flora is finally in good use. I do like her paper and her size, even though I do have to get used to it as well. She's not easy to carry with you I can tell you that! ;-) But at least I'm working in this book and enjoying it.

Just to be sure that I picked the right book for my next journal I asked my assistant and he tested it extensively.

"Yep! Very comfortable!"

Sounds like a keeper to me! ;-)

Have a wonderful and artsy week!