La Vita Felice

I made it to the end of my 2015 Dylusions journal! This is the very last spread and the right hand page has been glued to the back cover of the journal. There is still one spread I have not posted here yet but it will be coming in January on Stencilgirl Talk and on this blog. For this spread  (La Vita Felice or The Happy Life) I went to town with the Stencilgirl stencils. I used so many that I'm having trouble naming them all. Here is the list: the large stencil from the January 2014 Stencilgirl club, the large stencil from the September 2015 club, the large one from May 2015 club, Rows of Triangles stencil, and S306 Text and Texture Explore.

I glued on vintage text elements and the enigmatic face of 2016 (in reality an ancient piece of Eastern art). She is not giving away anything about what the New Year will bring us. The entire piece was inspired by the quotation by Giocomo Leopardi  in his Operette Morali, that I came across quite some time ago and that is so suited to this time of year. It reads:

"Quella vita ch'è una cosa bella, non è la vita che si conosce, ma quella che non si conosce; non la vita passata, ma la futura. Coll'anno nuovo, il caso incomincerà a trattar bene voi e me e tutti gli altri, e si principierà la vita felice. Non è vero?”

Roughly translated into English this means something like: That life which is a beautiful thing, is not the life that you know, but that you do not know; not the past life, but the future. With the new year, things will begin to treat you well as well as me and everyone else, and  a  happy life will begin for you. Is this not true?

It's a sardonic question. A New Year is not necessarily going to bring us happiness. We just think so.

 However it's possible to work on that happiness, regardless of circumstances and it's at this time of year that we tend to contemplate that. Therefore: Life, live it, love it! I have also written the Italian text in pencil alongside the ink drops flowing down the pages. Pieces of the vintage text are outlined and show that in this optimistic page there are also other messages hidden away. I love to find meaning in my randomly glued on vintage texts.

There is a lot of gold on this page, sadly lost to the photographic eye. You'll have to take my word for it.

It had been my plan to decorate the outside of the journal when I first started working in it at the beginning of 2015 so I had been using both the back and the front to wipe up left over paint and test out stencils and stamps thinking it would all be covered up anyway.  By the time I did this last spread though, I had come to like the resulting very messy look so I'm leaving it be, only adding the year to the front of the cover.

I can't really show you the very yummy,  textural feeling of having all those filled up pages done. There is something hugely satisfying about it all and that in itself is enough to spur me on to open the next Dylusions journal and start filling it up in 2016. I already had a new journal but just in case there might be a worldwide shortage of them (you just never know!) I have already bought another new one!

See you back here in the New Year! Have a good one.