When Shimelle asked us what was different and what was the same about our life, I didn’t come up with different things. Just one- Responsibility. So I journaled about my responsible side, the one thing that is constant, but ever-evolving.
Artistically, it’s very linear. which I’m trying to break out of. Better luck next time, eh?
I stewed about the cover all weekend, then today decided to just get started. I like the way it turned out.
I hope it shows up correctly cause the thumbnail is only a portion of the cover.
TFL
Hello!
I’m very late posting, I realize!! The inner critic is really having it’s way with me, so this is tricky for me right now! I’m still not done with my week 1 entry. All weekend, I felt tired and negative, so I thought it best if I were in a relaxed state of mind before attempting some serious journaling!! So, hopefully, I will post it in the next few days.
Anyways, here are my cover and intro page! I realize they’re kind of rigid and plain, but I knew it was going to take me awhile to feel comfortable with this process!! :)
Forgot to add the link. Duh!
I think I have verbal diarrhoea! My first pages are about change, I suppose. Many of the major changes in my life have been thrust upon me and I have been powerless to do anything about them except accept them and move on. Sound easy – believe me it isn’t. This is about the latest major change that led me to art. I left the mistakes, rubbish handwriting etc because I am beginning to accept that that is me. I don’t do straight lines. (even with a ruler). I won’t bore you with the content.
I am into clarting with ink and paint. I am using loose watercolour paper folded in half that I will sew into a book at the end. The top layer of green paint and the dark green have interference gold mixed in. Makes it kind of shiny and glittery. Used some stamps, rubber and postage.
I liked the quote be Emily Dickinson: A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
Well I couldn’t wait to get downstairs, load up the pc and check my e mail this morning and when I read the prompt for this week I KNEW what I was going to do. I guess the canning is not good enough for you to read all the printed journalling but it is something that was sent to me a long time ago in an e mail and which I have never deleted.
I know the feelings described in the journalling so well that just opening it up and doing this page really bought back some vivid memories, some blissfully happy and some extremely painful. I know that there ought to be a companion page for this outlining my own experiences and right now I am toying with making it – I don’t know if it will get uploaded and I don’t know if it will be made to go in the journal or to be destroyed once I have “got it all out” I am just not sure if I am ready to share some memories with the rest of the world (including my nearest and dearest!)
Thanks for looking
Mel
x
I didn’t post this before, because it felt very personal. Actually the personal stuff is very small, and blurred out of the picture here.
This all started with the garbage text that came out of the printer when I was trying to print a picture on fabric. I kept it, reluctant to waste the printer fabric and because I liked how it looked (yes, I did think of the art journal).
I started inking the background (since my journal is just a regular notebook – well a pretty one from paperchase with a translucent cover – all my pages are primed with white acrylic paint or gesso to give them a bit of stability and let them take the colour better). I just printed directly with the inkpads themselves. I liked the stark graphic look. I added cut up bits of the printer vomit. Then I started thinking about the ‘black & white’ facts in my life – one of which I had only learned about that day. I was thinking about hard facts and how whether you deny them or not, no matter how far back in your mind you push them, they are true and will insist on being dealt with at some point. I added words and phrases that seemed relevant to me, in different handwritings, with rub-ons and stickers. Right in the middle of each page, I added a brief note of the hard facts I had in mind. That was enough at the time – and fairly hard at that.
I don’t feel they are quite finished yet.
I posted my intro page earlier on in the week – thanks for all the lovely comments! This is the page I have done as a companion page for it. 
My first page was full of questions about changes in my life and who I was becoming as I left my role as a teacher and prepared to become a mum for the first time. As I said before whilst it is a challenge I am relishing I felt kind of lost. In an effort to examine what has changed I dug out a photo collage I made for a circle journal just before I found out I was pregnant. When i looked closer at the things i had selected to represent me I was surprised to find that they all still pretty much apply. As you can see from the bottom right of this page I have come to the conclusion that I must try to be more positive – I haven’t lost the things that make me me, i am just adding to them!
Thanks for looking
Mel
x
picture didn’t upload…maybe because I am on a Mac in using Firefox as my browser..I will try Internet Explorer for this…boo…hiss !!
Here finally..is my cover, the bottles represent inspiration, creation and discovery…if only they could be bottled !!
