Only a Reflection

The Documented Life Project 2016 is coming to an end and there won't be another Documented Life next year. I haven't done any spreads for the December theme yet so these pages are a combination to reflect that theme that reads: Life Lessons - a year long reflection. I have kept it very simple as you can see.

I played in the 8 x 8" Dylusions art journal with black pages and used a wide variety of spray paints to make the pages so that they are a reflection of each other. It includes some very shimmering paints although that is very hard to capture on the pictures.

Then I stamped on the quotation I found that reads: "life is only a reflection of what we allow ourselves to see". I used a gold stamp pad and then outlined the letters (from a variety of alphabet stamp sets) with a white marker.

I have enjoyed the three years of The Documented Life Project and it has made me art journal at least once a week. I hope to keep that going under my own steam in 2017.

Being An Individual

This is my day this month to be a Stencilgirl Guest Designer and that means that there is a full tutorial for these pages on the Stencilgirl Talk site today. You can find it here. As I mentioned a few days ago this is also the first spread I did in the 8 x 8" Dylusions journal with black pages. I have had the journal for quite some time as I seem to have made a point of honour to possess every art journal on the market! But I hadn't used it yet and now that I have started to work in it I'm surprised by how much I am enjoying that black background.

The other thing I experimented with was using Radiant Gels through the stencil in both copper and gold and I love the additional sparkle this gives the pages. To add even more I also used a sparkly blue gel pen to fill in the circles of the flowers and mandalas. A paper napkin with flowers was also part of the mix on this spread.

And of course as you can see it features a large and several small mandalas. This one comes from a very early Stencilgirl stencil S041 Mandala #1. I'm definitely going to work more in this black paged journal.

Thanks again to Stencilgirl for having me as their Guest Designer, it's always both a joy and an honour!

A New Beginning

The July theme on The Documented Life Project 2016 continues as: vote yes, saying yes to new experiences. The art challenge was to start with a black background. I had recently started to work in the 8 x 8" Dylusions journal with black pages (look out for my next project as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products this coming Wednesday!) so I grabbed the journal again and began by making a multi coloured background using paints and the S191 Open Buildings stencil. I usually don't have any specific aim at the start of the pages so simply use a stencil that catches my attention when looking through my stencil stash.

After that I glued on some handmade paper with black imagery which looked quite graphic and that led me to grab the medium stencil from March 2014 Stencilgirl Club to add more geometric images using white paint.

Still following the theme I grabbed some under paper on which I had been trying out a stamp. It's a foam one bought quite some years ago from the Aftrican Fabric shop, made by Trapsuutjies Textielverf. It apparently symbolizes friendship and interdependence. I found two quotations (both from  Flow Magazine calendars) and glued them on, together with the image of the woman walking towards her new beginning.

The page needed more and finally I realized I wanted to write on the pages.  I used the text of the song Make a New Beginning by Tracy Chapman. I hadn't realized till I started to write them down just how appropriate they are for the world at the moment.