I love Carve December! It is an Instagram challenge started and hosted by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs. She provides prompts for each day of the month and people carve stamps (blocks) inspired by those prompts, or whatever. I have generally been one of the “whatever” carvers but this year I am following the prompts and having a lot of fun with it. I am curious if you can guess what the prompts might be based on what I carved. I would love it if you would leave a comment with your ideas.
I have made another paper bag art journal to capture all of the printed goodness.
I will be teaching classes at the Art Hub in Cambridge, Wisconsin again this coming winter. Come in out of the cold and have some fun. The new schedule will be available soon. Keep an eye out here and on Instagram for updates.
I’m going to be teaching a grid art journaling class on Saturday, February 7th from 1-4, a Zentangle class on Friday, March 20 from 6-8 and how to make paper bag art journals on Saturday, April 25 from 1-4. My last post has an overview of my paper bag journal that I made for all my October activities. I have already made one to get ready for Carve December! I’m really loving this kind of journal.
Last Saturday I had a great Zentangle class at the Art Hub. We explored the tangle pattern crescent moon and played with flower options to create our own unique variations. Here is the mosaic from the class.
I used a paper bag art journal to capture the essence of October. It was a jam packed month! I posted a video (reel) on Instagram that you can see here. I wanted to share some still photos as well with more information about the content of the photos.
The paper bags come from a meal subscription service I use called Isthmus Eats and I get 1-2 meals in them most weeks. All the ingredients come with a recipe and they are very tasty but sometimes challenging to make. It has been great to increase the variety in my regular meal rotation. In any case, I have a growing stack of these paper bags and I knew how I wanted to use them. You can see I decided to make a paper bag book with pockets! It got really chunky!
This first page layout includes a Zendala with the first Inktobertangle (Inktober Zentangles) patterns of festune, toodles, seedways and melvina by Zentangle, Inc (first 2), Carla Jooren and Nadine Roller, respectively. Click on the pattern name to go to the instructions on how to draw that Zentangle pattern. The orange print with the eyes is from the resource I made for my Block Printing Fest handout. The background is papers that I have gelli printed in October and that were laying on my work table.
The list of Inktober Tangles prompts is on the next page with a tan phi tile with some of the patterns. The tan tile includes Star Rite by Nina Dreher-Goddertz, Oyvia by Shie Naritomi, and Adriadna by Tomas Padros. When you flip that pocket over you can see the ogee variations I played with. On the right are 2 ogee blocks I printed during my Repeat Pattern Design Deep Dive class with Ali (@3DottedPenguins). I used the ogee shaped spaces to draw in the pattern Lilife by Barbara Steyer. I liked this pattern so much that I carved a little ogee stamp of it and played with it some more. This is layered over some woven gelli prints.
I continued to play with that little ogee stamp on a blue phi tile shaped piece of paper and a little scrap of the blue paper. The tile is on a background of “quilted” gelli printed papers and book pages. It includes the Inktober tangles cochombros by Tania Ferriol Joyer and Ole Ole by Reyes Galindo. The Zendala on the right side is one of my favorite Zentangle patterns, zenith by Zentangle, Inc. It has some similarities with delwhy, another favorite and one that I have carved a bunch of stamps of and I included 3 of the stamps on the Zendala. You can see the Block Printing Fest label and in this pocket I had some of the prints I used in my Block Printing Fest presentation. I put a copy of the handout from my presentation into another pocket. Here is a photo of the stuff from all of the pockets in the book. It includes some Artist Trading Cards I got from Mel Beach.
The page under that pocket includes a Zentangle tile with the patterns Mrth and Tripoli from Zentangle Inc, and Puffle by Sandy Hunter. I carved 2 little tripoli stamps (the triangles) and added some tangled triangles. The triangular Zentangle tile includes the patterns Ing from Zentangle Inc, letterish by Jody Genovese, and they both also include some other patterns that I use frequently.
The next page layout includes 2 ATCs left over from a batch that I created to trade with Mel Beach for the lovely chicken and lady liberty (seen above). Behind that pocket is a print in yellow green and blue inspired by the Block Printing Fest session with Sarah Matthews. There’s also a few of my stamps included here on more gelli prints.
I love how these Zentangled papers turned out! The big grey one includes Middleton by YuRu Chen, Kangular by Tomas Padros, and butria by Ute Andresen. The one on the right on blue paper includes owlpeek by Susan Yeo, Yeed by Midori Furuhashi, quandry by Zentangle Inc, and bownus by Angie Gittles. The page under the pocket is some block printing I did for my presentation for Block Printing Fest and from some block play that Ali Baedecker did during one of the zoom sessions.
As you can see, there was a lot of inspiration and art making in October! I want to thank Stephanie Jennifer for again organizing the collection of patterns for the month. She provides the links to the step outs for all the patterns and it makes it very fun and easy to participate.
I’m so excited to be able to share what was keeping me so busy in September!
If you’ve ever wanted to dive deeper into block printing, learn tips & tricks and make fun hands-on projects, or get a behind-the-scenes look at how other artists work — this is your moment.
👉 Block Printing Fest runs from Oct 28–30 and is completely free to attend live. 👉 There’s a mix of pre-recorded sessions (that you can watch anytime during the day) and live chats where you can connect with artists & attendees. 👉 And if you can’t make it to everything, the All-Access Pass gives you extended replay time + bonuses. I’ll be there teaching a session on using Zentangle fragments in block design, and honestly, the lineup is 🔥. Don’t wait – grab your free ticket now and come join us! Get your ticket here. I am an affiliate for the Block Printing Fest which means I might receive compensation at no extra cost to you.
Post it somewhere (the refrigerator works if you don’t do social media).
There are other October challenges that have grown up around Inktober and the 2 that I enjoy are PrintInktober and InktoberTangles. Print Inktober isn’t very active this year and it generally includes both gelli prints and block prints and I’m doing both. I’m really focusing on the Zentangle challenge. It is a lively and inspiring community on Instagram and I really enjoy it. I’m always amazed at how quickly my Zentangleing skills improve when I do it every day!
I am also exchanging some artist trading cards (ATCs) with Mel Beach who is the master of ATCs! Quilts are her love language and she is amazing at them. She shares her ATCs all around the world. I mostly only share with her. I have a few from other artists, but I haven’t gotten anything to organize them yet and I just have the energy to make art and post about it on Instagram. And sometimes I can teach or show it or mail a few ATCs to my Instagram friend. And I try to blog about what is going on at least once a month.
I’m so happy with how the Zentangled ATCs turned out! All of the stuff that I’m generating (that I’m not mailing to Mel) is going into a paper bag book that I created. It has lots of pockets and spaces to collage and put Zentangled goodies in.
This coming Saturday I will be teaching an art journaling class at the Art Hub in Cambridge, WI. We will start out altering a book to serve as our art journals and then we will do some gelli printing. After that we will use a stencil and black or white paint to create a line from stenciled images along the edge of one of the pages. Then we will cut along that line to make an interesting edge. A gelli print will go on the next page that will show off the cut edge. Coordinating papers will be collaged on the main page to create a cohesive layout with pen work to tie it all together.
The class will run from 1-4 pm and the cost is $65. All supplies are included and you will leave with a new altered book art journal for you to continue your art journaling practice in. The Art Hub is located at 145 W Main St. in Cambridge. There’s still time to register if you are quick! Register here.
I currently have art on exhibit at UW Hospital on 600 Highland Drive in Madison, WI in the surgical waiting area. It will be up until October 4. Hopefully you won’t have a reason to see it in person at the hospital so here are photos of the pieces that I will have in the show.
I had one piece, Dane County Garden, juried into the Art by the Foot exhibit at the Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau, WI. This show will run from October 3 through December 20. Here is their description of the show “So much creativity in such little space! Art by the Foot features a variety of artwork that is 12 in or smaller in size. A great show for collectors to visit.” There will be a reception on November 14, from 5-7pm.
Wishing you good health, safety, plenty and peace.
Coming soon to the Art Hub in Cambridge, Wisconsin: giclee prints (giclée printing refers to a high-quality inkjet printing process used to create fine art prints from digital scans of artwork.). greeting cards and rectangular stickers.
I am also teaching an art journaling class at the Art Hub this month on Saturday, September 27th from 1-4pm. The cost is $65 and you will leave with an art journal that you have started working in. The Art Hub is located at 145 W Main St. in Cambridge, WI. It is once again an altered book class and you can register here.
A collection of mixed media index cards created for ICAD (Index Card a Day) 2025.
I used a compass to draw some circles to expand my usual torus mandala to create spaces in between the patterned block prints. Then I added some Zentangle patterns that would unify the piece. After that I cut off an index card sized piece each day or so and worked on it as it’s own discrete entity. Here are some examples of the cards. My last two posts (June and July) also have more examples.
I am so happy to have explored all these possibilities! It demonstrates the value of diversity and inclusion and will hopefully improve the next piece I plan to create. It will be a version of this with my favorite components of these. Which one do you like best? Great news, you don’t have to choose just one.
I gave some background information and beginning samples of my Index Card a Day art in my last blog post. I did decide to use the technique of cutting a larger piece into index card sized (3×5 inches) pieces and working on them as individual pieces. I’m very happy with the results.
I also dropped off 5 pieces for the EcoSquared show at Hatch Art House. EcoSquared will run July 1st – August 31st, with an opening reception Friday July 11th from 5-8pm. It would be lovely to see you there. The address is 1248 Williamson Street in Madison, WI.
The exhibition is geared towards Hatch’s emphasis on using upcycled materials and will feature only square works of art. Here are my pieces.
Jeanette Clawson Art 