Sweet Sixteen

As I mentioned briefly yesterday I did sign up for The Documented Life Project 2016. It's no longer free but it is priced at only $12 so hardly expensive. When I discovered that we were going to work on making and decorating a planner I wasn't so keen. I am very happy with the Michel Design Garden Diary and as I had already bought it decided to stick with that. You will have seen in my post yesterday as well, that I have found a lovely source of new weekly prompts. However as I have obtained The Documented Life Project 2016 I do get their weekly e-mails and lo and behold it contained prompts too! I am probably not going to manage to do both prompts each week but the ones this week for DLP16 immediately gave me an idea and here it is. Our theme for January is: Going out on a limb, trying something new. And the prompt for this week reads: Incorporate 16 in your art.

The song Sweet Sixteen by The Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur sprang into my head immediately. I heard this in concert in Dublin way back when (more than likely it was 1981). I think I still have the cassette I bought at the time. I also remember the riotous pub visit afterwards but no need to go into that now! You can hear the song here. It has been swirling around in my head since I made this page so be warned. In fact I'm playing all their songs on YouTube as I'm writing this. Some of the lyrics of Sweet Sixteen are on the spread.

I also knew I had a picture of myself at that tender age during a visit to Amsterdam to see a Greek tragedy while in secondary school where I did both Latin and Greek. Again being in Amsterdam was lots more fun than the educational event although the costumes were impressive. Amazing how I remember them while the name of the tragedy is now long gone. My visual memory has been so strong from the word go. So I printed myself out and added her to the page, crowned with a CREATE hat.

I used stencils to add the ink splats and while doing that I also remembered another quotation with 16 in it. It reads:

"Remember sixteen when all the world was new and a lifetime stretched before you like fresh snow just waiting for your footprints".  

I wrote it around the edges of the spread. There were no footprint stencils or stamps to be found in my stash so I compromised with one vaguely like it (from Prima). And for trying something new I cheated slightly as I have done it before but have never felt comfortable with it. I used Dylusions sprays through the stencil. I love the sprays as they have such wonderfully vivid colours. The disadvantage of them is that they can be re-activated by water (or other fluids like matte medium) so you are never sure that they stay where you want them to. But on this spread I liked how they dripped.

The last addition were the Dutch postage stamps. They match in colour and of course at sweet sixteen that's where I lived. Queen Juliana was still on the throne as well.

The spread was done in a Dylysions art journal. This one is a square 8 x 8" one. I'm going to do the DLP pages that I do this year, in which ever journal I fancy at any given time. You will be able to see the spreads in question by clicking on the DLP16 label beneath this post and in the sidebar on the right towards the bottom.