Live Long and Prosper...a birthday present

Last year I made several Traveler's Notebooks using a masking technique. I knew the technique very well from my art journaling and since I hadn't seen anyone use this on leather I thought I would give it a go.

My goal was to get a lighter lettering (or other) onto the notebook.
Up to then I had only been able to get darker images into the leather using stamps. The masking would allow me to keep parts lighter (like this).

The masking technique worked fabulous and I bought a silhouette portrait to explore the possibilities of this further.

Somehow live got in the way, with my job, combined with the Etsy Shop and family life... the machine just sat there gathering dust.... (so sad)

However now that I've quit my job to make TN's full time and my sister in law's birthday (a huge star trek fan) was coming up, I forced myself to MAKE IT SO ...

Painted Traveler's Notebooks...

Á while back I discovered you can paint Leather Travelers Notebooks with acrylic paint, my all time favorite medium. Regular Acrylic paint will work, however special acrylics for leather are better and give a much nicer result.

Since then I have made quite a few Traveler's notebooks that were painted, among which are my painted lady and some nebula's. I tend to show some of the TN's I make in my facebook group, Lady Falcon Traveler's Notebooks and on my instagram, @LadyFalconTN, but somehow seem to forget to post them here...

So without further ado, here's my latest Weir Tree TN. It's an A6 Traveler's Notebook and it has one, larger/older , brother, or sister, in the world =)

These are hand painted and since the leather doesn't take kindly to pencil, I can't sketch it out before hand.

How I'm using my Traveler's Notebooks at the moment

A year has passed since I made my first leather Traveler's Notebook and I've been using this sytem now for well over a year.

I've been making my own diaries and inserts right from the start and have adapted the system to suit my needs. I've used several different lay-outs and setups through-out this period, but I think I have now found a setup that works exactly how I like it.

I have 4 RS TN's for different purposes, one for work, one for art journaling, one for my Etsy store and one personal journal and diary/agenda. I also have a Fieldnotes sized TN for lists and keeping track of online orders and a small Passport sized one that I use as a wallet.

At first I used a setup with a MOTP, a WOTP and a daily diary with a chronodex adaptation to fit a 24 hr day. As time progressed and I was slowly overcoming the symptoms of my burn-out, I found I didn't need a full daily page to keep track of what I was doing. I did however want to keep at least a page per week.

 ___Warning, picture heavy post___

29 Faces check-in #11, 12 and 13

Yay, I made it to face 13 on friday the 13th. Nearly halfway through the 29 faces in 30 days.

Though I must admit, I might have bitten off more than I can chew. So just in case it gets too much, I have some paintings and drawings from way back when standing by. Luckily that hasn't been necessary yet.

For face #11 I wanted to go bold and big and not sketchy at all.

WOYWW 221

Wednesday again Time for yet another WOYWW and I have finally found my way back into my art journal. Since I now made a new realy cool one and I won't allow myself to work in that one until I, at least, finish working in this art journal.

I have way to many things going on at once and I do feel it is distracting... too much to try out.

I realy need to stay on top of things and make myself more organized. So I bought an agenda a while back, as I showed you last week.

I've been good an I have been using it, but all I seem to do is make lists. Which is good, don't get me wrong, but I also nee to do some sort of time management thingy.

That's why I started looking at chronodex and spiraldex as a system.

WOYWW 220

I wasn't going to write a post today, because there's not much going on realy. I've been taking a break from crafting and blogreading etc. Trying to prepare myself for going back to work next month. Trying to get into the right mindset.

I have been doing some painting, but somehow not in my art journal. Just on some old 12"-12" scrapbook papers that I didn't like.

On my desk you can see one of those art journal paintings. I do consider them art journal pages, because I do journal on them. That is, I dump the contents of my brain into my arm and out through my fingers onto the paper. I don't stop to think and just let it all out. The same way I write in my day book.