The Light at the end of the Tunnel

The new theme for March on The Documented Life Project 2016 is: Seeking Treasure - finding value in the small things. For some reason my brain stored that as: tiny treasures. The art challenge for this week was: go splatter crazy.

I started without any preconceptions by making a background with acrylic paints and a stencil. It's very hard to spot the stencil any more but I used Floral 1 stencil by Traci Bautista. I splattered on the pages to my heart's content.

I then started to think about my wrongly remembered prompt of tiny treasures and grabbed the little stickers, printed from my Instagram photographs by Social Print Studio and thought about making a path with them as the cobblestones.

A path has to lead somewhere and I knew I had this small image of the light at the end of the tunnel which seemed a perfect fit. I also found a wanderer for the path. After I stuck on the images (they are self-adhesive) I outlined the path with a black Stabilo All pencil and outlined each one with a white marker.

I wrote a variety of quotations along the side of the path, all to do with that light at the end of the tunnel. Then I went slightly mad and added the tiny little footprints along the path. I must have been a bit delirious already to attempt such madness as shortly afterwards I started to feel quite unwell, thought I would go for a short lie-down and woke up 25 hours later. I have no idea what hit me but presumably I needed that sleep. All back to normal now!

In hindsight perhaps the spread is symbolic for that journey I took through sleep into the light of this new day now. For me the 9th of March 2016 simply vanished into nothingness.

I love the higgledy-piggledy look of the path and also the fact that the little photographs are now safely stored in my art journal to look at in the future. As for all my DLP16 spreads, this one has been done in the 8 x 8" Dylusions art journal.

I have lost the Plot

We have reached the end of The Documented Life Project 2015 and are staying with the December theme of: Storytelling with the written word. Our last art challenge is: Storytelling, and the journalling prompt: storytelling as an underlying fabric.  I honestly had a vague sort of idea of where this might lead me but I was wrong! The spread took me by the hand and lead me nowhere.

It started well enough as I glued on two pages from a vintage book on the facing pages of my Dylusions journal. I covered the pages with watered down gesso and used paints and all the stencils from our December club by Stencilgirl. You might get a glimpse of some of that. But as it happens I wasn't very happy with the result so went over the entire spread with gesso again,  and then wiped some of it away again with a baby wipe.

I added a lot of rubberstamping with text stamps  to provided that "underlying fabric" of storytelling. One of the stamps I used is an absolute favourite, Romantic Text designed by France Papillon for Stampotique. The stamp itself tells a story and I love the cursive font.

What to do next? I opened my box of vintage images and picked up two I like very much and had wanted to use before but they never made it to the page. Do they tell a story? I was meant to be storytelling, after all! I came up with: frightened maiden rescued by Amazonian warrior princess. But in all honesty by this time I had lost the plot, so that became the story. It was: Destination Unknown.

This of course was pure serendipity and by wonderful synchronicity the definition of "serendipity" was staring me in the face on the back of the envelope in which my good friend Lenna send me her seasonal card. That was glued on as shown together with some Dutch postage stamps that matched the spread colour wise. I have no idea what part they play in the story!

I added the text using letters cut from a variety of magazines. The very elaborate ones come from Flow Magazine, a new favourite discovered during 2015. I am looking forward to reading it in 2016 too!

There are lots of new things happening in the way of online classes including the new 2016 edition of The Documented Life Project. It will be completely different from this year and it will now cost $12, which is a snip! That does however mean that I will be able to say less about the themes and lessons here because of copyright issues. However for that price you can oh so easily sign up yourself. The link is here.

I have loved working in my Dylusions journal this year and will be loath to leave it behind so whatever happens I will continue working in art journals. I have signed up for various other projects next year (they are in the sidebar on the right) and will be picking and mixing them all up, doing what I fancy and leaving those lessons that don't speak to me.  In a way I'm sort of making up my own year of art activities. So exciting.

Give Me Time

For our penultimate week of The Documented Life Project 2015 we are continuing with our theme of: Storytelling with the Written Word. Our art challenge this week is: hidden journalling, and the journalling prompt: the greatest gift I give myself.  It didn't take long for me to know what such a gift would be in my case: more time!  If you have been following my blog, you will know all about my time issues. I try to squeeze too much into my life with the inevitable result that I'm always short of time. No doubt 2016 won't be an exception to that rule. You only have to look in the sidebar to see that I have lots of activities already lined up for next year. As Stuart R Levine said it so well:

"We give our time away all day long, to emotions that gain us no advantages, to people who do not value our time, to inefficient habits. If you want to take back this time, you need to cut to the chase".

I will try! 

In the meantime I spend time making this page. I started by writing some journalling about time on the pages and then covered that up as per our challenge with 2 pages from a vintage encyclopaedia from the 19th century. These were gessoed and then painted over using Liquitex Glossies and a stencil from The Crafter's Workshop. I wanted the bars as a representation of how time keeps us prisoner all our lives and then kills us off in the end. The crosses (from the same stencil) also refer to that as does the skull.  Then I added the pink clocks (also a Crafter's Workshop stencil) with spray ink.  I found the face in a Sunday newspaper magazine and filled it with stop watches. They as well as the skull, the black birds and the wings all come from a Alpha Stamps collage sheet.

I used my Time Flies stamp (it features heavily in my Dylusions art journal!), designed by Rebekka Erikson for StampWorld and the Life is not measured.... stamp by Stampers Anonymous. The clocks came from a newspaper. The Give Me Time letters were rub-ons.

There are several quotations handwritten on the spread. Along the head it says: "Time is what we want most, but what we use worst (William Penn) and by the right hand side it reads; "I hear the heartthrob of time in my veins" (Terri Guillemets).

I used quite a bit of glitter mica spray to make the pages sparkle and I've tried to capture it on the photographs. The effect is better than the picture! As for the answer to the question: Want to live for ever? No, definitely not. I simply want to make more of my time and fit in as much as possible. I'm cutting to the chase!

Wordless

We are still telling stories with the written word for The Documented Life Project 2015 December theme. Our art challenge this week is: use quote or lyrics as storytelling. And the journalling prompt is: "One of the hardest things is having words in your heart that you can't utter" (James Earl Jones).  Well in contrast to that, my words just spilled out onto the pages this week. I started with the background in various colours where I rubbed out the words using stencils and a baby wipe. All the stencils I used were word ones, mainly designed by Carolyn Dube for Stencilgirl. 

I stencilled on more words in the more conventional way, through the stencils. Finally words were collaged on. You could say I did all this randomly but to be honest I had by that stage already decided on the image I wanted to use as my focal point and the words I glued on have some relevance to Ophelia and her fate as I was after all, story telling! Pieces of a paper napkin with hearts were added to the pages (using only the top layer). I also rubber stamped on more text.

 Ophelia took centre stage. She comes from a painting by John Everett Millais, one of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Ophelia committed suicide as told in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The words I used all in some way echo that. But mere words can't describe such an act completely. It usually leaves us WORDLESS (added through a letter stencil, outlined in black and filled in with a white marker).

As per our art challenge I also added a further quotation that comes from an old French proverb. It reads:

La vie est à moitié finie avant que l’on sache en quoi elle consiste

This is usually translated into English as: Life is half spend before one knows what life is. I'm leaving the interpretation of the story I'm telling on this spread to whoever is reading this. I'm keeping my words in my heart and won't utter them!

There needed to be a connecting line across the pages for compositional purposes, so postage stamps featuring flowers and matching colours were added in the two opposite corners of the spread. If I had known when I started in what direction the pages would move, I might have used less happy looking colours but in a way that contrast too tells it's own story.

The Book of Life

The December theme on The Documented Life Project 2015 is: story telling with the written word. Our art challenge this week is: Words Front and Center, and the journalling prompt: "Life is a book. We fill the page". Words are right up my street and I had a wonderful time putting as many of them as possible on the page. I used virtually all word stencils designed by Carolyn Dube for Stencilgirl although you only get little glimpses of them (mainly the Wall of Words one)  peeking through the many layers. I also added 4 different text stamps to the background. I wanted the background to look like a dilapidated and weathered poster board on which many posters had come and gone, leaving fragments behind. I literally scraped the paint across the pages.

I also collaged vintage text to the background from a variety of sources and then placed the main focal figure on the page. He comes from a painting by Watteau and is Pierrot although he was previously known as Gilles. He came from an old art book that is in pieces as I have removed so many images from it. As I was putting it away I noticed one of my old Ex Libris stickers (featuring my maiden name, now no longer visible, but it told me I have had that book for a very long time indeed) in the front and that seemed the perfect addition to make the spread more personal.

I started thinking of quotations I could use. The first one that came to mind is now written along Pierrot's side. I just love it. It reads: "Once you learn to read you will be forever free".  How very, very true. It's a quotation by Frederick Douglass, a African-American abolitionist and writer.

For the main focal point, however, I went for a quote by Charlie Brown: "In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back". As someone who is guilty of always turning to the last page of any book or magazine first this has real meaning for me! Some of the letters were stamped on and the main ones are stickers coming from Tim Holtz's Salvage Stickers Seasonal. I outlined them with a black marker.

For the final image I therefore turned to the above one, of two contented people who have almost reached that last page of life. It's an engraving from a vintage French book in my possession, dating back to the beginning of the 19th Century. I printed the image on vellum and if you are familiar with my work you will have seen it before. There is something about it that I deeply appreciate. The vellum proved temperamental to stick down so I used a washi tape with more lettering. And then couldn't resist adding it in other places on the spread too, and loo and behold, a fountain pen was part of that particular washi tape. It was meant to be.

And of course there had to be a postage stamp!

Be Kind

The Documented Life Project 2015 is coming to a close. This is week 49 already, only another 3 challenges to go and my Dylusions Journal is nearing completion too. There will be a Documented Life Project 2016 but in a different form. I have signed up for it and this one won't be free but not to worry. It will cost a mere $12 so won't break the bank.  But I have caught the bug of working regularly in an art journal (2016 will be different in that respect) and for me that is the major benefit of this year's Project, as well as all those spreads I've made with much pleasure.

Our theme (set last Saturday) is still the November one of Stencils, Stamps & Masks, and the art challenge was to use all three. I must admit up front that I didn't use any masks. I had a flower one at the ready but when I had made most of the spread it simply didn't need anything else so I left it out! The journalling prompt was the quotation by Henry  James about the three things in human life that are important: Be kind, be kind and be kind.  Again I gave it my own interpretation which is to: Be Kind to Yourself.  This is sometimes so easy to forget but specially in this month of December it's very important not to lose sight of looking after yourself.

The background was made using acrylic paints and the large stencil from the August 2015 Stencilgirl Club. Then I used an image that has long been in my box of cuttings and magazine/book imagery. I have no idea where she originally came from but it looks like she could do with being kind to herself.

I added the flower image (from a 17th Century Dutch flower painting) and the owl. They are reputed to be wise creatures and I wrote the following words around him and the flowers:

"The only thing you need to do today is breathe. Everything else is optional".

This was taken from The Little Book of Daily Sunshine, by Clare Josa. I love opening it at random and taking a bite-sized inspiration for the day, specially when that day is very grey and soaking wet. 

I added rubber stamping in the shape of a text stamp designed by France Papillon for Stampotique. The letters for the title were cut from magazines. I dripped some acrylic inks down the page and at that stage the page looked complete. No need for flower masks or postage stamps this time. It's hard to explain why I come to such decisions. There is simply an inner voice that says: STOP. It's done. There is a feeling of completeness like the spread was always meant to look like this.

Write Your Own Story

 

The Documented Life Project 2015 is continuing with the November theme of: Stencils, Stamps and Masks. We are using Masks as our art challenge and "Mask"arade as the journalling prompt. I took my inspiration partly from a UnMasked themed sketchbook I did for the Sketchbook Project some years ago as well as a more recent one called Passioneyes.

Very conveniently just the right stencils arrived the day before I started this spread, as part of Stencilgirl Club. When you are a member of the Club there is another advantage every month. The designer of that month's stencils has a full tutorial in the form of a PDF or Video (or both!) specially for the members. November's stencils were designed by Seth Apter and I used his video as the base for this spread in my Dylusions journal. That means starting with a black gessoed background which was a new departure for me. Then I went to work adding textures following his instructions.

For my masks I used two images cut from magazines, one a face and the other a figure. Both were put onto the page and I then feathered out from them with white paint to make the outlines. They were then coloured in with Silk Glazes which meant the background could still be seen vaguely but the colour was a contrast to the rest of the pages and the white.

I knew I had some cards featuring a mask and one of those was glued on to the left of the spread. Inks in various colours were dripped down the pages to add some cohesion and I stamped on the words: "Don't hide behind a mask". For the text on the facing page I used one of Seth's stencils this month from the Club, reading: "Write Your Own Story".

I outlined with Stabilo All black pencil, a black marker as well as a white one and added the postage stamps. Sometimes I spend more times selecting the stamps than on the entire spread. I usually have an idea of what I want from the stamps but it isn't always easy to find suitable ones, and usually I have to compromise, but these came close!

 

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The Tapestry of Life

The November theme for The Documented Life Project 2015 remains: Stencils, Stamps & Masks. Our art challenge this week is to use: hand carved stamps, and the journalling prompt: Tapestries". Somewhere at the back of my mind I remembered a quotation about tapestry and life but it took a bit of dedicated searching to retrieve it. It comes from Sherrilyn Kenyon's book Kiss of the Night and reads:

"Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make".

The past few days have taught all of us that the warp and weft of our lives are also deeply affected by the decisions made by other people. All we can do in the face of this is to continue to live our own lives as best we can, making our own choices and walking our own paths. The rest is, and will always be, out of our hands. I consciously made the choice to apply happy, bright colours to represent my tapestry.

 

I used the Cornish Petals stencil from Stencilgirl to give that impression of a tapestry. Yellow, orange, pink and turquoise Dylusions paints provided the background colours. I added tissue paper (of leaves) and pieces of a paper napkin (featuring pansies). I did use hand carved stamps as per our challenge, although the hands that carved the stamps weren't mine! Instead I used some of my small wooden flower stamps that I have collected over the years.

 

The letters of the quotation come from a Letters Sticker Book (American Crafts). They were white and I outlined them with a permanent black marker.

 

Finally I added one of my favourite art elements: postage stamps. They were primarily chosen for their colour and size and as you can see include a set making up one of Vincent van Gogh/s self-portraits, and also a painting by Manet, whose work I love.

 

In case you're wondering (as I did) about Udmurtia (where the Van Gogh stamps were issued) it's a region in the Upper Volga area of the old USSR, where both Russian and Udmurt are spoken. I had never heard of it till I Googled it and chillingly it's the birthplace of the AK47 Kalashnikov rifle. It's also one of the few regions in the world where shamanism is still actively practised. Sometimes you discover links you had much rather remained ignorant off. Even this remote and probably highly dangerous place now seems to be on the tourist map. I did wonder how Vincent made his way onto their postage stamps!

 

 

Some of the rest of the stamps are purely random but I did manage to also incorporate a Dutch stamp of Queen Wilhelmina. I was still a child when she died but remember images of her funeral very well, with all the main mourners dressed in white. It's funny how such memories drift back just by looking at a postage stamp. It's one of the reasons why I love them so much.

 

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Uncertainty

The new theme for November for The Documented Life Project 2015 is one close to my heart: Stencils, Stamps and Masks. I don't need any encouragement to use these as they are present on virtually every spread in my Dylusions art journal. The art challenge this week is: Stencils, and the journalling prompt: "On the edge of uncertainty - what are you afraid of?". 

I looked up two quotations about UNCERTAINTY and liked them both so combined them in this spread. The first one is by Blair Pascal and reads as follows:

"We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end"

This made me think of waves and the background was based on that idea. The only stencil I used was one from the October Stencilclub that had big and large dots. I also used a handmade wavy edge stencil to make wave shapes towards the bottom of the pages. I used one of those lines to collage pieces of vintage maps along the edge. The quotation was written along this. To represent the drifting from end to end I used postage stamps with images of ships and planes. 

I also stamped the background randomly using a text stamp  called Life Consists (by Hampton Art Stamps) as the contents seemed appropriate to the subject of the other quotation I decided to use (by William Congreve):

"Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life"

One thing however is certain in life and that is that it ends and the text on the stamp refers to that. 

The focal point is a detail from a Vincent van Gogh painting called L'Arlesienne. Her serious expression seemed to me to tone in with the quotation. What is she afraid of? Probably much the same things we all are. Uncertainty is not something that sits well with many of us and yet, we have little or no control over what happens nex,t so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. A lesson I'm still learning!

I added black/white tape to the pages and the final touch was to drip acrylic ink in magenta on them as well as blue and turqouise. They served to link it all together and the magenta in particular added that extra infusion of colour I felt was needed. 

Just Create

The theme and challenges for The Documented Life Project 2015 are set on Saturdays and as last Saturday was the final day of October we are continuing with the October theme of translucent papers. The art challenge this week is: Teabags, dryer sheets, fibrous papers, and the journalling prompt: Just Created. I used fibrous papers (not having any of the other two options) and found a fibrous paper bag in which my Tibetan prayer flags had been wrapped as well as some other fibrous papers. The light blue bits have vanished on the finished pages, at least on the pictures (the texture is still there but not visible) but you can detect the darker turquoise paper I also used. As for the journalling prompt I dropped the D from the end and used the words as a personal encouragement. 

Stencils from the Stencilgirl Club June 2015 were used in the background as well as  the Entangling Threads one of which you can see a lot more on the finished spread. Because the fibrous paper bag I used (see above) featured a Buddhist temple I started looking for a focal point to match it and found it in the form of a meditating figure from a magazine. I used her to cut out a similar figure from a gelli plate printed paper as you can see below. 

 Rubber stamping was done with a variety of stamps, including the one about Creativity which reads:

Creativity is an endless journey where

we should always take the scenic route.

It comes from the Tim Holtz Collection. The CREATE words were stencilled on using the Now is the Time stencil  from Stencilgirl designed by Carolyn Dube and I then utilized her Vintage Typewriter Alphabet stencil  to add CREATE on top of the meditating figure. 

I did a lot of outlining using markers in a variety of colours as well as water soluble oil pastels and of course postage stamps! In an ideal world I would have liked to have 3 of the Czechoslovakia stamp but alas that wasn't to be. Instead they were balanced by the Spanish stamp on the right hand side, chosen merely for the colour.

The page has lots of sparkle but you will have to take my word for that as it isn't visible on the pictures.