There's a bright future ahead

When I read the new prompt on Friday morning for Colour Me Positive which said: The Future is Bright, I almost took a physical step backwards. It was the day after we lost Rueben and the future looked very dark indeed as far as I was concerned, and I decided not to do a spread for CMP this time.

However after thinking about it for some time it dawned on me that all the uplifting quotes I put in my art journals are all too easy to use when times are good but that are meant to carry us through those impossibly difficult moments life also throws at us regularly.

This is indeed the right time to consider the quote I used that reads: "Holding on is like believing that there's only a past; letting go and moving on is knowing in your heart that there's a bright future ahead". 

I'm far from letting go yet so these pages also contain a memory of when our two dogs were still with us. The picture shows them laying head to head as they used to do back before the summer of 2015 which is when we lost the greyhound. I used that symbol of metamorphosis: a butterfly, and also grabbed my favourite hot colours combined with turquoise to portray that far away (at the moment) bright future.

I used collage (with the pet photograph, a paper napkin featuring doors with fruit trees, tissue wrap Melange by Tim Holtz, and deli paper previously stencilling with circles), rubber stamping and stencilling.

The rubber stamp came from a sheet by ImpressMeNow, and I used the following stencils, all from Stencilgirl Products: L301 Circles Circles (on the deli paper), S428 Screw Heads Small and L348 Doodle It Borders.