Unwind

All the classes and projects for the New Year have started and I have signed up for a fair few. I am however going to do things differently from last year. First of all you will see me combining prompts and lessons from various different sources into one spread and I also won't find it necessary to do each and every prompt and/or lesson every week. I'm going to cherry pick what I would like to do and on occasion also do work that doesn't relate to any of the courses at all.

That's because last year was rather hectic and towards the end of the year the pressure was getting to me so I selected my word for 2017 with care. It is: UNWIND. Finding our intention for the year was the first task in Wanderlust 2017 (a paid for class) and I combined it with this week's prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures (completely free) that told us to explore texture.

The other change this year is that I will be working in whatever journal takes my fancy at that time, rather than keep one journal for one specific purpose. I want the freedom to chop and change between large and small journals. The one I'm working in here is not a dedicated art journal. A friend gave me two lovely notebooks for Christmas (sorry there is no brand name mentioned anywhere on them) and I wanted to use them, so even though the paper needs reinforcing with gesso (which I always use anyway) and I need to glue some pages together for extra sturdiness it's so worthwhile working in such a lovely book. It's sized 5.3/4" x 8.1/4" when closed.

 I wrote down my intentions for the year: Be Calm, Be Mindful, Unwind, and took that as my starting point. I collaged with pre-stencilling and stamped deli paper, as well as vintage text. The actual texture (in the form of the squares from a The Crafters Workshop stencil) is from Gloss Beading Gel by Golden.

The background was sprayed through the L450 Fantasia stencil from Stencilgirl. It has virtually disappeared under the subsequent layers but set the tone for the spread colour wise, with that rich magenta.

I used art foamies: the RingTicTac one designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and the SantaFe one designed by Nathalie Kalbach. The former one was stamped onto deli paper and then glued on while the latter one was stamped straight onto the pages. I also used the TCW2038 TinyRing Bits from The Crafters Workshop, direct on the pages to make the small circular shapes.