Art Portfolios

Sunday, January 19th, 2020

In my first post of the year I discussed documenting your work by creating a spreadsheet or some type of journal or log.  This week I'd like to write a little about Art Portfolio books.  I got started making textile art after I took a couple of classes, the first one being a six month fabric embellishing class and the second one being a  year long color class.  For each of these classes we had to do a project a month based on what we were currently learning.  At the end of these two classes I had 18 pieces of art.

One of my friends who had taken the same color class created a mini scrapbook of her pieces from the class.  I thought that was a good idea so I decided to do the same, but to also include my fabric embellishing class pieces.  Right around that same time I had been scrapbooking my daughter's school pictures on the computer and discovered the Shutterfly website.  I received a free 8 x 8 inch book offer so I decided I would make my class scrapbook as a Shutterfly book.  I became an instant Shutterfly customer.  The quality of their books is so nice and I had a beautiful record of the pieces I created in those two classes.

In 2012, when I completed my 52 weeks of art project, creating another Shutterfly book was to perfect way to document all of the pieces for that project.  And so every year since then, I have created a book to document all of the pieces I created the previous year.   Each book becomes a beautiful journal or scrapbook showing where I went in my art journey the year before.  It is fun to flip through them and see the progress I have made from year to year, how one thing has lead to another, what classes inspired me, and how my travels influenced my art.

I would encourage you to do some journaling of your own art.  It gives you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the year.  It also inspires you to set goals of art pieces you want to complete each new year.  After all, you will need something to put into your next year's book.