Love Winter

The prompt for this week on Colour Me Positive 2017 was: Love. What else could it be on a week that contains Valentine's Day. I'm as fond of people (and dogs!) loving me as all human beings are,  but Valentine's Day leaves me kind of cold so I wanted to interpret the prompt a different way and instead I'm celebrating my love for winter. I used to intensely dislike this time of year, before spring and with cold and snow on offer, but over the years I have come to love it more and more. There is something very beautiful about a white world, in which the bare branches are clearly silhouetted against the sky, snowdrops and hellebores are starting to flower and a little dog is cavorting in the snow.

 As luck would have it I found the perfect quotation in a magazine. It reads:

"This secret beauty I have found

When morning sun came streaming down.

A golden glow like a celestial crown

in nature's winter garden"

(D. S. James, Nature's Winter Garden)

I started with collage using vintage images and text and some magazine imagery too. To that mix I added Distress Crayons and acrylic paints as well as acrylic inks. I used a lot of stencils to get the effect I wanted. Here is the list:

from Stencilgirl Products: S433 Amsterdam 6 designed by Nathalie Kalbach (on deli paper and then collaged), and M139 Diamonds and Triangles Mini, designed by Andrew Borloz and finally L464 Barb Wire, designed by MaryBeth Shaw herself, the owner of Stencilgirl.

from The Crafter's Workshop TCW2024 Rubber Bands Frags and TCW2038 TinyRingBits

I outlined with white and black markers before spraying with Perfect Pearls Turquoise mister. You can just about see the glittering effects on some of the pictures.

I hand wrote the words: Love Winter, onto the page. There is more going on on these pages than my love of winter and it's worth remembering that this is an art journal: stuff gets personal from time to time and there are things I prefer not to share. What is on the pages will remind me of what those things are without revealing them to you!

This is the very last spread in my 8 x 8" Dylusions journal although there is still one that I haven't shared with you yet. It's a project for Stencilgirl Products and you can expect to see it on the 27th Feb. As you can tell I don't use new journals for a new year but simply work in a journal till it is full and then grab another one from the shelves. Yes, I have a huge collection of as yet empty sketchbooks. Doesn't everyone? It makes me happy to look at them and anticipate what is going to materialize on those mostly white pages.