Guest Host LARA

I met this guest host about two years ago on line, through another challenge blog I host called Gutter Girlz. I couldn't help but fall in love with her willingness to be honest in her pages, no matter how raw they were for her. I know she has inspired many more people to take that leap and use art as therapy to work through tough times. She's also AMAZING at all things layered and painty. Something I want to learn more about for sure. Please help me welcome Lara!

1. YOUR NAME lara
2. WHERE YOU ARE FROM living in atlanta, ga currently ... but a midwestern girl at heart, born and raised in ann arbor, mi
3. TWO PLACES YOU GET JOURNALING INSPIRATION FROM: flickr and song lyrics/quotes
4. WHAT YOU FIND TOUGHEST TO JOURNAL ABOUT things i don't feel strongly about - i know that's vague, but i have to be emotionally connected to journal!
5. WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT working journaling (the actual writing) into imagery. i've seem to come to an impass where i can only do one or the other.
also i LOVE paint but need to expand my horizons using it... i think that will be what i explore the most in the upcoming year!
6. ARE YOU PUBLISHED? HAVE OTHER BRAGS? not published but am a member of gutter girlz and gauche alchemy design teams. my "new years intention" for two years has been to get published - maybe this will be the year! also i make a birthday card for my hero, bono, every year given to him from african well fund supporters that i know he holds and sees :) i'm pretty proud of that :)

7. YOUR WEB SITE OR BLOG http://todreamoutloud.blogspot.com

8. A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF The last two years of my life have been extreme hell, and possibly the only thing saving me sometimes was art journalling (and xanax). I now live with my two doggies who are the lights of my life. I am a board member and active contributor to african well fund, an organization dedicated to bringing clean water to sub-sahara africa. by day i am a graphic artists but for my "fun" art i prefer glue and paper and things more tangible.

9. THREE UNKNOWN THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF
1 - i won $150 in a Madonna lip-synch contest in 1989 for performing "Holiday" from the "Ciao Italia" video (complete with backup dancers and bags of combs).
2 - In 2005 i snuck backstage at a Muse show in Louisville, KY, found Matthew Bellamy's wardrobe closet, and smelled everything in it
3 - I have been dying my hair since 1985 and never plan on stopping

10. WHAT YOU HOPE TO GET FROM A YEAR IN THE LIFE Last years "year in the life" project really hooked me on art journalling and it's such a sense of accomplishment to see a full journal of the last 12 months of my life. Somehow it makes me feel calm and centered just to hold it. I hope the 2010 journal does the same so when i look back at it in 12 months i can visually see my life - the good and the bad.

11. WHAT YOU HOPE TO GIVE TO A YEAR IN THE LIFE Like most of my fellow art journallers i started out as a scrapbooker. I felt like i didn't fit in anywhere and got very frustrated trying to find a community of scrapbookers that didn't just want to use pretty paper and scrapbook about their children and holidays. Most of the communities i found i felt out of place if i wanted to scrapbook about myself... even though i still did :) But really what i was doing was a form of art journalling and once i figured that out, i felt more free to express what i needed to and not as worried about fitting in anywhere. I hope that maybe my experience can inspire at least one other person who feels that way right now.

12. ONE THING YOU WISH YOU HAD LISTENED TO THAT WOULD HAVE GOTTEN YOU STARTED IN JOURNALING SOONER i wish i had figured out sooner that it is OK to "scrapbook" about yourself and this can give you an incredible outlet to express things that can't be put into words.

HERE'S WHAT LARA IS USING FOR HER JOURNAL:
After much thought, I decided to use the same format for my art journal that I did last year. The size was perfect and I LOVE the way it feels when i hold it - the weight and the size.
The story goes, last year out of desperation in mid-February to join this one year art journal group. I had been putting off doing the first three prompts because i thought i wanted to buy a journal, but i couldn't find anything that i liked in the store (either wrong size or wrong weight paper), so I finally just said "eff it" and grabbed some heavy weight cardstock paper i had laying around and duct tape, because we all know duct tape can fix, or in this case make, anything. And the journal held up all year!

So, to make:
- I took 12 sheets of paper and folded them in half.
- Then duct taped two of the folded sheets together to make 6 pieces.
- Then put two of the new groups together and taped those - so then there were 3 groups.
- Then duct taped all 3 of those together to get the final book.