Been a while! Busy weekend, plus lots of new site-seeing ’round the web has lead to it getting to be nearly a week since my last post. Hmm, let’s see, what have I been up to? I bought a new chair at Staples; normally I wouldn’t bother mentioning such mundanities but OH my heavens does this chair rock. It’s like an armchair mated with an office chair and gave birth to a cloud. Seriously. But let’s see, what else for news from the land of Betsistudio? Still Twittering like mad, though I still feel totally clueless about some aspects. Oh, and a tremendously fun mail day, yay!

I got an order from Dick Blick, an order from PrettyTape on Etsy, and Lynne Perrella’s “Art Making: Collections & Obsessions” from PaperbackSwap. All on Monday. Woot for excellent mail days! Let’s see, what’s the rundown… a BUNCH of loose Caran D’Ache Neocolor watersoluble crayons. I caved to peer pressure – everyone else is using them! They look like so much FUN in the bazillion blog posts and YouTube videos I’ve seen referencing them. I went with picking out my colors individually, as it seems to be cheaper that way than buying the sets! On a similar note, I saw my friend Ricia using watersoluble oil pastels (with gold acrylic paint instead of water, YUMMY!) at our art retreat back in November, and I finally sprang for ‘em. And last but decidedly not least, I picked up Sharpie Poster Paint pens in three fluorescent colors. Frickin’ awesome. These, along with all the yummy tapes from PrettyTape, are Kelly Kilmer’s influence. :)

And speaking of Kelly, this brings me to the title of my post. I am working hard this year (and have been forever, really) on creating my life, by hand, one piece at a time. So it’s only natural that I signed up for Kelly’s six month journaling workshop, A Life Made by Hand. I’ve been a member for less than a week and I’m loving every single minute. It’s only $50 for now til the end of June, I can’t recommend it enough. We are having SO MUCH FUN. Here is a spread I’ve done using Kelly’s marvelous prompts:

(Click the image to see it bigger on Flickr.) This was a tricky prompt, talking about my gifts – I am learning to be better about recognizing my own talents, but writing about it and sharing it is pushing some new boundries for me!