Mixed Media Mayhem - Tomorrow

I was inspired to do this journal page by the challenge posted on Art Journal Journey for favorite quotations and the Butterflies prompt at Moo Mania.  Among my favorite quotations is the ever optimistic perspective of Scarlett Ohara in Gone with the Wind, "After all, tomorrow is another day."  Thinking about how tomorrow can bring a change to make what seems to be a grim prospect into a bright adventure brought to mind the caterpillar vs butterfly image.  The caterpillar wages on grinding leaves to eat and spinning her cocoon and the butterfly just seems to flit away with her past behind.

I began this page by using the ever essential tool, the credit card, to swipe on orange and yellow paint.  I used Martha Stewart's pearlized craft paint because I just love that finish. I had some beautiful scrap deli paper that I had used to clean my Gelli plate so I stenciled and stamped images of butterflies to cut out.  I used a script stamp, a cheese cloth stamp, and a filmstrip stamp to add more to the background.  (I got up in the middle of the night and worked so I totally forgot to make my step outs.) A close up shows some of this texture.  Lastly, I added a small image of the caterpillar to convey my message.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Hello Dolly, Happy New Year

For my birthday I had an outing to the Pasadena Flea Market which I had longed to do for years.  I love to look at old letters, books, photographs, and postcards.  In one stash I found a photo of four young women taken in the summer of 1905.  I brought it home with all my other goodies, but I kept taking it out to look at it...pondering their thoughts, pasts, and futures, and thinking what a watershed year?  1905 - Einstein publishes his thesis expounding E=MC2, Bloody Sunday in Russia heralds the beginning of the Russian Revolution, Las Vegas is founded, the Japanese are given the nod to go into the Asia mainland...so much history.  Did these young women have any idea of what was to come? They appear so innocent in their summer frocks.  Their names written on the back gave me a sense of personal access.  I made this page for them and especially Dolly.

I had begun this journal page by wiping paint with a credit card.

I used Vaseline as a resist and added a second layer.

Now my page had the appearance of an old peeling barn door appropriate for a historic interpretation. I added layer with tissue paper I had stamped with StazOn using images of text.

To add more to this text theme I stenciled with black using "Ledger" from the Crafters' Workshop. For collage papers I used my Gelli plate to print some doily patterns on deli paper.  Now I had a thoroughly layered page with an antique feel.

To give Dolly prominence I scanned her image and altered it in photoshop to give a pen and pencil rendition.  I glued her down to form the place for my journal entry

                                                           

and taped the photo to the opposite side.  I could not glue the photo down because I wanted to be able to look at the handwriting on the back.  I used a piece of washi tape to just tack it in place.

As we enter this New Year I ponder how will history look back on 2015

Mixed Media Mayhem - Burn Bright

Gelli printing artists know that one could pull prints all day trying masks and stencils to get unique images.  For this journal page I was inspired by a post by Julie Fei Fan Balzer (http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/) post.  I tore several random masks from deli paper leaving a stencil in the negative shape.  I used these to print orange and yellows on the page spread then I over printed with blue using a small circle stencil.  The shapes produced suggested necks, shoulders, and hair.  I copied two of my faces from my sketch book then lightly painted the faces in, drew and colored the eyes.  The orange and the bright eyes implied the text - Burn Bright

In the close-up pics you can see the background layering process.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Fish Out of Water

Mixed Media Mayhem - Fish Out of Water

What's more fun than random Gelli printing?  Using a range of blues and violets, old wall paper scraps for stamps, and circle stencils and sequin waste, I made a a two page spread that, while stimulating the tactile sense (doesn't that Gelli plate feel great when you use your hands as a barren?), left me uninspired.  But this is an art journal.  It doesn't matter. It's just for fun.  Maybe I see bubbles, maybe a reef, so I drew a fish on it.  To give the fish presence, I colored him in with gesso and gave him stripes with yellow gelatos.  Since my drawing skills are minimal, the fish was ill proportioned.  To cover his distortion, I cut shapes from my scrap deli paper where I had cleaned off the Gelli plate to make some kind of reefy things.  I was really proud when my grandson, Brody, popped over my shoulder and recognized it saying, "Oh you drew a clown fish."  See...fourth graders and I have an understanding.