Yesterday, I posted a picture of my workspace as I finished up my butterfly flip book. I promised a walkthrough and I knew, because of the interactive nature of the book, it needed to be a video. Hope you enjoy the tour:
Here is a tutorial video from Melina Pylant:
A production note: I have made lots of videos in my life so I know even the shortest of shorts can be a challenge. But, as you can tell from my YouTube channel, I haven’t done much video production recently and had a general sense that it had gotten easier despite knowing that online creators spend many hours making it look effortless.
After trying multiple ways of anchoring my phone and not being satisfied with the results, I pulled the CZUR scanner off the shelf. I haven’t used it in so long that after blowing off the dust, I had to install the software. But, I was up and running pretty quickly. It took two tries mainly because I was determined that the last one was the last one.
I am participating in Blaugust 2026 and determined to post every day even if it is past my bedtime.
I spend a good part of most days in my studio making some kind of art or craft. For the past few days, I have been working on a flip book. When I start a project, my workspace is open and clean, but over time, the materials and tools related to the project begin to pile up. I call it productive chaos because I generally know where everything: there really is some method to the madness. I have been working in the studio for several years now and each time I do a reorganization, I get more organized. Tools I use regularly are within arms’ reach; current paper choices get stacked nearby.
This book is mostly done so the papers and tools have been tucked away once again. I just have to decide what to add to the back. Then I plan to do a video walkthrough, something I have not attempted before. All thanks to Blaugust 2026!
My husband gifted me a set of six paint-by-numbers with a National Park theme. I have completed three of them and plan to finish the set sooner rather than later. I find painting relaxing and generally easy. It occurred to me they are a bit like jigsaw puzzles: someone else created the picture and my job is to recreate it.
I went to my monthly arts and crafts group today. We do a variety of projects from watercoloring to gel printing to book making, the latter being the hobby that brought us together. A new member joined today. She shared her beautiful handmade books and paper along with her drawing practice. She is, in my book, an artist just like the rest of the women in the group. We create using a variety of materials, sometimes by following a pattern or other times by following our own ideas.
I mentioned working on the paint by numbers and that, after completing three of them on my own, I went online to find out if anyone had tips for creating better paintings. And, boy, did they! Turns out this is a hobby for many people. Canadian artist Athena Cooper shared ways to make the paintings look more professional and less like that puzzle where the pieces don’t quite fit together. I picked up a couple ideas for getting better paint flow and cleaner edges that I will put into practice on my next painting.
When I commented on how seriously some people took this hobby, the newcomer piped up, “It isn’t even art!” I suggested that there was some art involved as you didn’t always have to follow the suggested colors, but we left it at that. I was not prepared to dive into a deep conversation about the definition of art. But, her comment has stuck with me, reminding me of my earlier post about the craft police.
Who gets to define what is art? A google search or ChatGPT conversation reveal there are widely divergent opinions about the status of paint by numbers being art. Feel free to explore on your own. For me, it was ChatGPT that offered the most interesting analogy: “A paint-by-number is to painting what performing a classical piano piece is to composing music. Both require skill and practice, but one follows a predetermined design while the other creates something new.” There is, however, within that predetermined design, opportunities for personal interpretation. Is that enough to rise to the level of art? I don’t have the answer. I think, to paraphrase the United State Supreme Court Justice who famously declared he couldn’t define hard-core pornography but would know it when he saw it, it is in the eye of the beholder.
Have I piqued your interest in paint by numbers? Cornell Lab of Ornithology is offering free designs of new world warblers, suitable for any sort of media from paint to crayons.
I grew up doing arts and crafts. It was part of my world. My grandmother taught me to crochet. Counted cross stitch and quilling were popular with my friends. Every Christmas, I completed ornament kits. Fifty years later, I still put them on my tree.
As I move into retirement, I have made arts and crafts a priority. Over the past two years, I have helped create two monthly craft groups. Having a community of supportive crafters has provided motivation for trying new activities and honing my skills in others.
My daily creative work takes places in a hybrid planner/art journal that I have designed over the past year. It is a mash up of bullet-journal style monthly and weekly layouts along with junk journal and collage pages. For 2026, I am using single-month journals with brown covers and dotted pages: literal blank journals where I can design and create the layouts and tracking pages that work for me. I have included a couple examples.
I have learned a lot about styles and setups for these kinds of journals from various accounts on social media. I joined a couple of Facebook groups devoted to junk journaling specifically. They were full of helpful information and wonderful examples. But, there was a dark side as well. Group leaders felt the need to carefully define the practice. Commenters were not always as diplomatic as they might be. Posters began requesting that people be kind when they shared their efforts. General questions were often seen as critical rather than curious; users were directed to Google to learn more before they dared to engage. Commenters began arguing with each other over the content of their comments.
It is a little funny, really. At its core, junk journaling is about gluing stuff down. Margarete Miller, a crafting blogger, says there are no rules. I have no plans to share my journal with the Facebook groups as I am not interested in critique. I do this for me: it is creative and mindful and fun. I do share with my craft groups. We may do a bit of critiquing, but mostly we enjoy looking at what each of us has created. I get a kick out of looking at past journals myself, remembering where I was, what was going on, when I made any particular page.
Mostly, though, the group dynamics are sad. Many people never try arts or crafts because they don’t think they are artistic. Faced with a blank page and told to be creative, they are paralyzed by their inner critic. Junk journaling should be the perfect beginner practice to combat that fear, as you are, again, gluing stuff down. However, by creating some ideal way to glue stuff down and pressuring people into opening their work to potential public ridicule, these groups end up destroying any potential meditative impacts of the practice. In fact, they add to the anxiety that junk journaling was meant to help alleviate.
I was reminded of a clip from The West Wing that shows these kinds of hostile spaces have been part of the Internet almost since the beginning. The website referenced in the clip was real. Aaron Sorkin, who created and wrote the series, joined the group and almost immediately got into trouble with the message board denizens. As much as things change, people tend to stay the same.
I signed on for the #100DayProject again this year, paying a small subscription fee to be part of the Substack. I posted a couple notes there but I only have so much time and energy for writing and sharing so will focus on this blog.
The #100DayProject is sponsored each year by Lindsay Jean Thompson. The goal of the project is spend 100 days working on a creative project. I started with a plan for combining poetry and gel printing. I followed through on that plan for 10 days or so and was pleased with the results. But, I had subscribed to a monthly quilt box and the second box was on the way while the first box sat explored but unused on the shelf.
My time is flexible and mostly my own, but I didn’t have time for both printing and quilting so moved on to the latter. My #100DayProject turned to quilting for a couple weeks. My subscription comes from Mrs. Quilty and is meant for beginners. Each box includes a quilt block in a different pattern and then several utilitarian projects that demonstrate different skills. Fabric in matching designs, often from the same designer, is included; each box also provides a couple quilting tools. You are building your toolkit and fabric stash as you learn. The video tutorials are detailed and easy to follow. I am very pleased. This is an uncompensated review.
As I have sharedbefore, I am part of Ali Manning’s Handmade Book Club. She highlights a different book style each month, and my goal this year was to make each one during the month it was featured, thus ending the year with 12 handmade books. I have completed January and February but March’s coptic stitch binding was more challenging as it included fabric covers and multiple signatures sewn in one at a time. So, I moved on to bookbinding for my #100DayProject. I made a few small, single signature books with gel printed covers and two Valen-zines from gel prints. They got their own folder as well.
All this to say that I have moved the focus of my project to a bit wider lens of having fun and doing something creative in one of my areas of interest every day. Easter is fast approaching and I need to start making cards.
I am dropping photos of all the various prints and quilts and books in a Flickr album if you want to see what I have been up to since February 23:
