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.