TERI ANNE STANLEY

​​I can spend hours on Pinterest browsing other people’s art journals (and Bullet Journals, and scrapbooks…) but it’s only been recently that I started to mess around with the concept in my own practice. I’ve signed up for a few challenges here and there where you’re given a daily prompt and are supposed to make some art and post your project on Instagram or other Facebook with the appropriate hashtag.

Last fall I got interested in pretty lettering (aka #brushlettering, #handlettering, #calligraphy, etc.). To be honest, I’ve loved fancy writing my whole life. It was something we learned in high school art, and when I started scrapbooking as a young mother, revisited the concept. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

I signed up for a challenge at Dawn Nicole Designs and made a few pages with words about color. My attempts are pretty beginner-ish compared to the rest of Instagram, but I’m willing, in this case, to let my hiney hang out there for y’all to laugh at. ​

I also came across Allyson Bright, who has an art journal prompt group. 

But ultimately, for the moment, I decided to work on New Year's Resolutions (or as I like to call them, "Goals," because "Resolution" seems to be a bad word (as in, "Oh, I don't do resolutions"). ​

Anyway, I started a little booklet with some artsy/craftsy/messy pages about what I want to do this year. I'm posting everything on Instagram as I do it. If you want to doodle and post along with me, use #2018ArtJournalGoals and let me know to look for you! ​

I've changed web hosts, so this is my first blog on the new site. In my mind, this is going to be the start of a new, improved, social-media savvy me. We'll see how it goes. If posting regularly makes me crazy (er than I already am), I may back off, but right now I have good intentions. 

In a perfect world, I'll post at least three times a week with specific topics on specific days, but let's be real--I'm trying to be a full-time author with a full-time day job and a very active Attention Deficit habit. Although "deficit" isn't exactly the problem. It's more like Overactive Attention. There are WAY too many things that keep me busy, and I definitely focus on each one at the detriment of the other things I'm supposed to be doing.

Like right now, I'm supposed to be sleeping. And if I'm not sleeping, maybe I should be working on my book. I've got edits to do on my first Sourcebooks Casablanca title (Big Chance Cowboy, coming out in fall of 2018, a story about an Army veteran who reluctantly begins to train his high school love's Rottweiler T-Rex to become a service dog). I've got to get those done, because my Entangled Publishing editor is going to be sending me edits for Accidentally in Love with the Pilot (July, 2018) any minute now. Eep! 

But I also set that whole, "Step up your web presence" goal, so mental meandering on the blog is valid, right?