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.