Home Page: written down

This week I wanted to feel lofty. I wanted to remember the days of my childhood when I would single handedly hurl piano stools across the living room because I was Wonder Woman. Where did that amazing, audacious girl go? She seems to have gotten lost under all the “shoulds” and “supposed tos.” My page was inspired by a wonderful website called sallyjean.com. She creates the most fantastic little collaged charms often giving her images wings. Very appropriate as we were encouraged to use wings on our page this week. I painted the background a bright red and then stamped all over it with some kind of french script. The tag in the middle contains a childhood photo of myself that I cut out and added wings to. At the bottom I cut and pasted a little saying that I wanted to welcome back into my current life…She always was a little too big for her britches. For me that means make no excuses, live fully, boldly, and as big as possible. Make no apologies. Reconnect with the Wonder Woman inside (No this doesn’t mean try to do it all and be it all until I collapse into an exhausted heap on the floor. It means remember who I am, claim my personal power, and for God’s sake stop trying to be small and invisible.)

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One…I truly did use one color (blue), one image (magazine clipping of girl jumping excitedly into the air), and one quote (about letting go). This is the week I experimented with gesso and I loved the depth and texture it gave my background. This prompt was immediately following the break and sludge prompts so it appears that my mind was thinking in this sequence…break free from all the holds me down, feel extreme grief when I realize all that I’ve allowed to hold me down/back, now let go. The quote was about how difficult it is to really let go because letting go, really letting go, is such a huge risk.

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This is my sludge prompt. This particular week I was feeling really down about life changes and losses, so that was what my sludge was…grief.
For this page I kept it simple. Background is painted with several layers of different colors of paint then sanded slightly. To that I added a photo of an angel statue that I took at a fabulous coffee house in Austin called Spiderhouse. I adhered it to some printed paper that looked like sheet music. On the printed paper I wrote the opening verse of a favorite childhood hymn (A Mighty Fortress is our God). I did some journaling about grief around the pritned paper but it’s difficult it see as its in black ink. I thought about re-writing the journaling in a different colored ink (like white) but decided that I liked the hidden, mysterious journaling. Because my thoughts on grief were personal and vulnerable I liked that they aren’t standing out boldly on the page.

Here is a close up of the angel photo.

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Well, I somehow posted my title before I was ready. Anyway, now for the real post. We are 9 weeks into the Art Journal challenge and I can finally access the written down site from home so that I can post!!!!! Yippee! We ended up having to purchase a new router (whatever that is). So I’m going to post some of my more recent creations. I won’t go back to week one but maybe soon I will have a web link where I can post all my pages. Kel gave us her link and I thought that was a fabulous idea and now I want one as well. The other problem is that I don’t have a scanner. All my pages are pictures I took with my digital camera so I couldn’t get great representations and you’re not able to really see the detail. But, I’m so glad to now be posting and fully participating in the class.

These are my break pages. For me break meant breaking free from everything that holds me back from living my fullest, most fabulous life. For this prompt I collaged a lot of photos of myself taken throughout the years. In all of these photos I can remember not feeling as if I were “okay.” Next I journaled on transparencies, listing all the thinkgs I want to break free from – primarily the war with myself that I feel like I’ve been in all my life – that incessant whisper right below the surface that constantly tells me that I’m not “okay” just the way I am. In the middle of each transparency I placed a photo of myself (one from childhood, the other my most recent photo of myself) and then added butterflies from the young photo to the recent photo. For me that represeneted bridging the gap from a time in my life when I honest to God believed I was Wonder Woman to today. I layed the journaling over the collage to give it depth.

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Tonight I got inspired.

This page is the ‘ONE’ prompt, to me I thought of being ALONE. Just some thoughts on being alone and lonely, how they’re different. How you can choice to be alone but not really know what it means. Mayb eyou can see the writing.

This is the wing prompt. I thought of butterflies and how they’re reborn when they come out of the cocoon.

It was kinda theraputic tonight.

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Wasn’t hard at all to come up with “irks”. Fit on as many as I could. What does that say about me?!
The photos are me and my brother as children.
The paper is Club Scrap.
The metal letters are Pressed Petals.
The red dots highlight the top six Irks! LOL!
TFL,
~jane

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what will tomorrow bring…be…think in the now…learn from yesterday…welcome the sun…a New Day.
Used texture paste – stamped a sun in the texture paste and the word WAIT which you can faintly make out down the left hand side of the page – a pictue of the Sydney Opera House cut up – from 2 different post cards – piece of tissue paper and a calendar page – sealed the entire page with gel medium.

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Ok, I so did not follow the directions on this ONE.
I started with ONE image and ONE color and ONE quote
(can you tell which ONES they were?!?) Then I could just NOT let it alONE. So I kept adding and adding and it changed the tone from ONE of just getting through each day to celebrating each day. I like that it took on a happy feel all on it’s own.

I tried a technique where you stamp with versamark ink and then brushed with pink chalk. I did this with the ONE letters and the butterflies and number ONE.

My scanner cuts off the sides but I wrote Each Day Has Enough Trouble Of Its Own in Spanish, French, German and Italian.

TFL,
~jane

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This wasn’t started by a prompt. I have found myself seeing source material for my art journal absolutely everywhere since this project began. There is always a pile of ripped out magazine pages in one corner of our bathroom now. This pile was all sunglasses.

Even though I haven’t been around much (coursework, teacher work, etc.) I have still been enjoying all of your work, and pottering away on my own pages. Looking forward to playing with prompts I missed, next week. Are we in week 9? I counted pages, and I have made 33 individual pages, although some of them are part of a double page. I knew this was something my life was missing!

Kel x

all of my pages together here

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No explanation necessary. I just feel like absolute shite.

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