Mixed Media Mayhem - Documented Life - A lot on My Plate

April Theme   Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)

April 18

Art Challenge:  Gelli Plate

Journal Prompt:  A Lot on my Plate

Yes, I know this is June...I do not respond well to deadlines unless I am held accountable in some way...so here is my post for "A lot on my plate."  I never liked the expression "full plate" especially when people use it to complain.  Who wouldn't want a full plate...as opposed to the empty one or the only half full?  My "plate" was full this spring with art activities in the various school programs I enjoy leading at the VBMA.  As the school year wound down, my activity also diminished leaving me saying goodbye to kids for another year.  To commemorate this happy experience, I made my entry for April 18, Gelli Plate Challenge.

I have a stash of Gelli plate printed papers that I made using hand made stamps to put on and take off ink to print images of carefree children at play.  Many of these were printed on deli paper making for layering of positive and negative images

To add more focus I stamped more of the child images on tissue paper with StazOn and glued them to the surface with matte medium.  This technique makes the tissue paper disappear leaving only the image.

I added more stamping with numbers for the dates 2014-2015.

For dimension I added a tag with a tissue paper image of a child, scrabble letters for Artist in the Schools, and broken pen and pencil.

Journaling was the final commitment...making myself write on my page to tell the story lest I forget it at some future date.

Although the art challenge in this weeks prompt was to use the Gelli plate, one of my favorite art results is the crinkly texture produced by the layered deli papers.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Asian Aesthetic

The Feminine Beauty of the Asian Aesthetic

After reading several posts on Facebook about the virtues of reducing clutter and purging possessions, I took a critical look around.  An avid collector, I have amassed both valuables and detritus from everywhere.  Some of it is on display, some of it is stockpiled in labeled boxes, and some of it is strewn randomly about.  Serious winnowing will take some time, but I decided to commit a journal to "use it up."  I started with one of my boxes of paper collected during my many trips to China, and I looked for stamps and other elements that would coordinate.  After admiring the journal posts at Art Journal Journey, I decided to do a spread recognizing the feminine beauty in the Asian aesthetic.

I began these pages with a collage of Chinese newspapers relying heavily on the graphic text. A coat of gesso pushed back the intensity.  Next, To provide layers, I adhered "Lucky" papers, stenciled bamboo stalks,  and stamped tissue paper.  I like the effect of stamping on tissue paper because I can avoid messy errors on my page, and the tissue is transparent.  I used some stamps to add the text background layers and some to add focal images.

As a final stamp, I parted with some Asian themed postage stamps to move around the page.

Documented Life Project - Cry Me a River

Documented Life Project

April Theme
Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)
April 11
Art Challenge:  Acrylics
Journal Prompt:  Cry Me a River

I have fallen behind in my posts for this project because I have had some trouble connecting with the themes.  For this post, I am not a crier.  With the benefit of age and experience, I have seen loss, but I can see every experience has been a learning opportunity.  My email tag is a quotation from Nietzsche..."That which does not kill us makes us stronger"  Although I can be a "negative Nellie" seeing the pitfalls in pathways, but I also tend to look for the positive spin in the bad situations.  Got this journal entry I looked for quotations to fit and found "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened".  That's the Pollyanna view.  For the other page, I chose words to the effect that crying is ok, but you still have to take charge and make your choices.  I searched for images of women crying and found the snippet about melodrama and the vintage ads.  Here is my result...

My steps involved swiping colors over the page with a credit card, adding texture paste which I could write into, collaging my images.

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 - the Documented Life Project - April 4 - Water Under the Bridge

Documented Life Project - April Theme

Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)

April 4

Art Challenge:  Watercolors

Journal Prompt:  It's Water Under the Bridge

The journal prompt for this week was "timely."  I had just finished watching the season finale of "Army of the Red Monkeys" and I was obsessed with the idea of the nature of time.  Does time go by so that the past is water under the bridge or does time have a cycle.  Can you let the past go since everything you are is a composite of what has come before?  Or if you could alter something in the past, would you,  and change your outcome?  Making a simple metaphor complex, I began my entry.

I began with my usual step of coating the pages with gesso and scribbling the prompt to remind me. Thinking of watercolors, I wanted to reserve some white space so I used tape to mask areas.  I splashed liquid watercolors around the page, and when that wasn't intense enough, I sprayed randomly with the Dylusion Inks.  I love the vibrance of these inks, but they are so responsive to liquid that I had to set them, first with Workable Fix, then MatteClearCoat, then matte medium.

After I peeled off the tape strips, I had to find a collection of metaphors about time.  During my internet research, my little dog, Opie, slept on my knee.

I used pencil to write the quotations, scribbled my journal title on the side of the page, and stenciled images of clocks from a Crafter's Workshop stencil.

In my collection of old books, I found an entry by J.C.C. Smart, "The River of Time," that spoke to my pondering on the meaning of "water under the bridge."  I scanned it and colored in Photoshop to go with the warm colors in the background. I think this entry is finished, but I might go back to adhere some 3d clock elements.

Mixed Media Mayhem - The Documented Life - March 28

The Documented Life Project

March Theme   Making Your Mark (Doodles & Mark Making)

March 28    Art Challenge:  Make a Custom Element

Journal Prompt:  "Ride the energy of your own unique spirit." - Gabrielle Roth

For this challenge I made several custom element having my usual problem of sticking to one thing.

First I created a drawing borrowed from a t-shirt from Bali where I went for both my 50th and my 60th birthdays.  I put her on a watercolored and stamped background.

I used a variety of gelli printed heavy papers to cut the shapes to correspond to the parts of the image.

I made a second kind of element using one of my ez screens...making a lotus on gelli printed paper. Hard to choose between the positive and negative images.

I put the lotus on her hand to represent her spirit so I needed another element on the right side.  I rubber stamped several parts of lotus blossoms on printed paper, cut them out, and pasted them to the page and made another screened image of a spiritual bird to place on her knee.

For my journal entry, I stamped the letters on tissue paper and glued them to the page.  This is my go to technique to avoid those awful lettering mistakes in the final moment.

Mixed Media Mayhem - Joy of Reading... in Bed

This layout began with the accidental collusion of a pack of flash cards delivered from Key Lime Supplies on Etsy, some old paint strips, and some interesting scraps from a quilting magazine.

It celebrates the joy of reading, but not just any reading...reading in bed. Since a cold winter in Wellesley drove me to the third floor to escape the black chill of nighttime, I have gravitated to the bed.  I eat breakfast there, I sew there, I draw there, I play with the dogs there, I take my online there, I even eat there.  This is a confession or a justification.

To begin, I had gessoed the pages some time ago and used them as mopping up.  I added some magazine cutouts to start a flow. In my stash I had piles of paint charts from which I had cut circles for a first grade project at the museum,  I played with placement.

I decided try weaving the French flash cards and the paint chips.  I found three that worked with my theme.  Also stenciled some iridescent turquoise squares around the pages and a page of dictionary text to balance on the right page.

To go with my theme I wanted some old postcards I had stored somewhere that pictured women reading, but, alas, I could not find them.  So I substituted a clip art image of a pretty serious looking gal.  I added some cut out letters which looked boring until I traced around theme with some pearly dimensional paints.  

I added my journaling to commemorate the rationale for my page.  This whole exercise was really fun, and I did not do it in bed.