Mixed Media Mayhem - Bucket List -

I really don't believe in "bucket lists."  They seem so ominously final.  But I'm always planning the next getaway and my choices are narrowing.  I've been many places and some places are just off limits now.  So I set some priorities for now.  When I was making my journal page for #The Documented Life Project, Layers You Will Love, Under Cover, I made two sets of backgrounds from the same materials.  This is a fun exercise to see the various directions you can take.  I use Cavallini wrapping paper from Paper Source, some tissue paper, Distress Inks, Walnut ink, and matte medium.

I have several boxes of travel ephemera including hotel, train, and plane stickers.  I wanted to use these (UP...not quite).

On the right side I added a tag that had my general list.  On the left, I added a vintage envelope folded with my journaling inside.  I added lots of postage and cancelation stamps.  

The final spread is like a piece of vintage luggage.

Compare this to the final collage made from the same background for the DPL.

Mixed Media Mayhem - The Documented Life - Borderline

March Theme       Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)

March 14               Art Challenge:  Borders

Journal Prompt:  "Borderline feels like I'm going to lose my mind."

I am not much for doodling except in the phone book but I can identify with the condition, borderline, I feel like I'm going to lose my mind.   So I let this journal page combine some of my ways of making marks and using journaling as a device for relaxation.  My finished spread does not have a border but it is borderline.

For a random start I gessoed the page then spritzed it with yellow, turquoise, and green Dylusions Ink and blotted it with a paper towel.

Seeing the overspray on the towel reminded me of my collection of dyed paper towels...(yes tha't right...paper towels are gorgeous when loaded with paint or dye.)  I pulled out a pile and began tearing them into pieces.

I found one sheet that I love for the background and the beauty of paper towels is you always have two of a kind as you pull the layers apart.  I glued the whole pieces down to the pages

I see a floral patten so began tearing circles to represent blooms and glueing them to work with the existing pattern in the background.  As I glued them down I crumpled them for texture then went back in to add gold to the centers.

As the piece came together it reminded me a Chinese floral painting so I added my journaling vertically to simulate calligraphy seals.

When I felt finished I used a Gelato to to around the outside edge to comply with the challenge of making a border.

Mixed Media Mayhem - #The Documented Life - Surviving the Elements

March Theme

Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)

March 7

Art Challenge:  As A Layer Element

Journal Prompt:  Surviving the Elements

Thinking about mark making, I was reminded of my efforts to learn Chinese calligraphy.  In a cold classroom in Yangshou I used a traditional brush and black ink to make swooping gestures that in no way looked like those of my master teacher.  After buying stencils and stamps, I was still not satisfied.  My solution was to actually trace characters from a  book and cut them into my own stamps.  I choose words like patience and compassion that were useful in conveying a message. None of my stamps worked for this project based on Elements. I remembered my first day in my 2003 trip to China where Beijing was blanketed with white snow and the sky was actually blue....so unusual.   I asked several people how to say "snow" and "sunny."  Some people wrote it down for me.  I dug these papers out of my travel stash(did I tell you I never throw anything away)  and committed to writing these characters on my page.  Serendipitously, I received a set of Chinese flash cards from Etys' Key Lime Supplies just this week and at the art show last weekend,  a vendor gave me a Chinese umbrella in my drink. All coming together.

I always begin with a nice coat of gesso and notes about the prompt.  

Along with my commitment to use it up...all the good stuff in my stash which would actually take about 50 years and I am 70...I pulled out some precious Japanese paper to tear and paste to the page to give a loose background.

I used a calligraphy brush to write xui, snow, and sunny in  my best interpretation of the actual calligraphy.

Next I looked in my huge collection of Chinese art postcards and museum catalogues to pick out an image that reflected the elements.  I chose a wintry scene, "The Rising Sun" by Zhang Lin.   I liked the lines of the whit trees and the round orange circle.  I tore the sides to blend it better and glued it with matte medium.

I choose several of my flash cards, "sunny," "warm," "conditions," "thunder." and 'snow" and glued them in a rhythmic pattern. Here is one detail...

I wanted to balance the sun on the right so I used the small drink umbrella on the left.  I added my journaling to talk about how the elements I survived in my Florida garden compared to surviving in the environment of my former home state, Massachusetts.

Here is the whole spread put together.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Layers You Will Love - High Five and the Documented Life Project

Documented Life Project

February Theme

Layers You Will Love!

February 28

Art Challenge:  Using at Least Five Layers

Journal Prompt:  Give Me a  High Five

The challenge for this week was to use at least five layers which is easy enough for me who can not keep from slathering on the stuff.  Harder was addressing "Give Me a High Five," the theme of the week so I decided to keep it simple.  

My first big decisions were choosing a color palette and selecting a tool/technique for applying the color to my page.  To start layering I wrote the prompts on my pages and gessoed over it.  Using a credit card, I spread acrylic green and yellow to give me some variations of bright grass green. 

For images on the pages I used a technique I learned in The Art Journal Workshop: Break Through, Explore, and Make it Your Own by Traci Bunkers and in the Youtube videos of Dyan Reaveley and Dina Wakley.  I placed my hand in several locations and used a baby wipe to remove the surrounding paint to leave my handprint.  I took this a step further by inking my hand with acrylic paint and stamping it on to the page.

To make my layers stand out I used a variety of pens and pencils to outline my hand images.

More layers included adding violet through the circle stencil, writing random related thoughts around my fingers, recording the steps or layers, and adding the "high five."

With the literal and figurative high fives on the page, I decided to stop and call it complete.

Mixed Media Mayhem-Documented Life Project - Two LuLu's

February Theme

Layers You Will Love!

February 21

Art Challenge:  Repeating Elements

Journal Prompt:  It's Worth Repeating

And now for the cognitive part..."worth repeating"  I began thinking about my name, LuLu which is a repeat.  I made three Gelli printed layers of repeating elements (alphabet) finishing with the luscious Pebeo purple/blue.  I made a effort to reserve some white space.  Now for the journal prompt.  I began calling myself lulu when I made a major life change and it stuck. My jewelry is made under the name of "It's a LuLu" and my students call me Ms. LuLu.  I hadn't put much thought into this change...my dear friend Jeanie Goddard had always called me Lindy Lou, a teacher in my department, Gail Vaccaro, always called me Lu, and a dear boyfriend used "LuLu" as an affectionate term. Years later when I was researching Ancestry.com I came across two old census reports in which my grandmother, Lucretia Gates Badgley, had been nicknamed LuLu. Gave me a chill.    So for "Worth Repeating" it was natural to think of two lulu's and the letters needed to spell that making for more repetitive elements. I went through family pictures to find photos of me and her at similar ages.

The bottom left is Lucretia in her twenties, the top two are me at close to the same age.I used the photos which I hand colored to establish our identity, added the painted, embossed letters to spell out our names, and wound a thread among the pieces to hold it together.  I painted the letters using the gelli plate.

I always write the challenge in the margin so that it shows through for that reminder-"Repeating Elements, It's worth repeating."

Mixed Media Mayhem - Documented Life Project -Undercover - Artist as Prospector

Week of February 14 for Documented Life Project posed the art challenge of covering up the good stuff, and for me, that is a real challenge.  I confess to hoarding art supplies.  This need to preserve especially applies to beautiful papers that I have purchased in my travels.  To bite the bullet, I began this journal entry with a piece of paper from Paper Source that depicts a favorite theme... maps... travel... geography.

Now the challenge was to cover this all up.  I first efforts were half-hearted.  Using Distress Ink to shade areas doesn't really count as covering up.  Sticking to my paper's theme, I applied a stencil of city streets.  

I just needed to let go.  I used the colors as my inspiration while going forward to really cover the page. I dug around in my stash for tissue paper in oranges and turquoise and some Gelli printed deli paper to lay out a general composition.

To cover more I used my beloved Gelatos to smear on color here and there.  The texture of the glued tissue paper picked up the colors to give more pattern.

I had met the art challenge of covering up the good stuff but I had not addressed the theme, "Undercover," except in the most abstruse way.  Considering all kinds of possibilities for the focal element I decided to go again to hoarded treasures and came across my collection of laminated leaves and butterflies that I bought from young girls in the garden at the Summer Palace, Beijing, China. This stash had all kinds of meaning hidden beneath...first this was a perfect December day of clear blue skies enabling us to see all the way to Beijing from the peak of Longevity Hill...and second the young girls passed me counterfeit yuan as change which I later innocently tried to use in my local grocery store in Xian resulting in lots of embarrassing attention.   

I used Goodreads to search for quotations that fit my thinking and found “Art is a kind of mining," he said. "The artist a variety of prospector searching for the sparkling silver of meaning in the earth.” 

― Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter.  How perfect...The artist as prospector.  To place the phrase on the page I stamped out the words on tissue pattern paper then glued them on with matte medium.