Feel the Fear

This week's prompt on the Colour Me Positive site is: Fearless, and the art challenge: cut out words to use on your page. Because my word for last year was Courageous, I have already made many spreads about being brave, having courage etc. The first thing that came to mind when reading the prompt was the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, by Susan Jeffers. Originally published in 1987 (my copy is a paperback from 1991) this is an early self-help book and judging by the state of it I must have read it several times. It's also adorned by highlighters and it was interesting to see what exactly I had been particularly interested in at that time.

Fear was a dominant factor during my youth. I thought for quite some time it was my fear but realised eventually that wasn't the case. It was someone else's and once it became clear how much that affected the quality of life of the person involved  (as well as others!) I realized my life shouldn't go that way. In reaction I  have done many things during the course of my life that were pretty reckless. Not so much physically speaking (although I have done my fair share of those too) but more like cheerfully entering into situations and adventures without considering the potential consequences. Fortunately for me, my instincts seem to be reasonably sound and I have never come to any serious harm.

This book was a reinforcement of my own thinking back then,  and even now, many years later and hopefully a bit wiser, whenever I feel a twitching of fear or even panic inside, I simply tell myself to take a deep breath and get on with it. So it seems like I have learnt my Fearless lesson and it was time to put the book to other use!

I started by tearing out pages and collaging them to the background of the spread. These were covered in paint and stencilled using the Scribbled Scratch Handwriting stencil by Stencilgirl (I'm getting more fond of that one by the day!). I used quite a bit of gold paint but sadly the pictures don't reflect that.

I used spray paint (from Liquitex) to add the face (Dia de Los Muertos stencil by Stencilgirl) to the left hand side (using white) and then also sprayed it (using gold) to a vintage dictionary page. I cut that in half and glued it on the right hand side of the face. I coloured in the face with water soluble oil pastels.I added various rubber stamps with fear and courage related sayings that you will have seen before in my art journal spreads. I also used my handwriting to note the most meaningful words for me: "Fate loves the fearless".

Then it was time to take the cover of the book and cut out the title and add it to the right hand page. Circles were added, cut from one of my gelli plate printed deli papers. More water soluble oil pastels were used to ourline them. Finally I went through what was left of the book and tore out some text that caught my attention and I glued them on as shown.

Of course I still couldn't bring myself to throw the book out completely and it will become part of my stash of collage materials. There is no need to read it again. I have got the message!