Those were the Days

The prompt on Joggles Art Journal Adventures this week was: to include song lyrics or title. I could have chosen from so many favourite songs but the choice was made for me before I started this spread in an A5 sized journal. I am in the process of destashing my "stuff" and have found many items that I had totally forgotten about. The vintage image I used in this spread was one of them. As soon as I saw her I knew she had to be my focal point this week and the song Those were the Days by Mary Hopkin seemed to suit her melancholic and sad look. I love this song from way back when and as I am growing older I understand it better and better.

The background was made using stencil L605 Soulful Scribbles Dots Dash stencil from Stencilgirl Products as well as L606 Soulful Scribbles Flourishes, both designed by Traci Bautista. I added stamping with an art foamie designed by Nathalie Kalbach

The text was added by the same rubber stamping method I mentioned in the post a few days ago using a mix of alphabet stamp sets and a piece of scrapbook paper.

I found text that to me related to the lyrics of the song on a rub on sheet from Tim Holtz and tried to rub it on, not perfectly but so that remnants of text can be seen. The vintage image was glued on and outlined with a black Stabilo All pencil.

Open Up

Wanderlust 2016 Book had another prompt for us last week and it was: "What opened you up in 2016". I had to think long and hard about it as it was such an eventful year, in both a good and a bad sense. Going to New York and the arrival of Flora were definite highlights, while losing Rueben and all the political turmoil both here and abroad had a deep effect on me as far as opening up was concerned.

I choose though to concentrate on the good. I didn't want you all to read my words about it all so I wrote and kept on writing on top of the previous writing there on the right hand page until the writing became more of a pattern than readable words. On the left hand page I added the following quotation: "And one day her heart just opened up and she knew exactly everything she was searching for had always been inside". (Jane Lee Logan)

I started the spread by glueing on pages from Cassell's Technical Educator, a vintage book dating back to the 1890s. It has wonderful technical drawings and I made sure you can still see them peeking through.

 Techniques used: collage, rubber stamping, stencilling.

Materials used: collage (with vintage pages, magazine image and postage stamps). rubber stamps (with a barcode stamp of unknown provenance, and with stamps designed by Everything Art for PaperArtsy set. EEA04). I also used the TCW2024 Rubber Bands Frags stencil by The Crafters' Workshop. Rub-ons from 7Gypsies were added too. I also used mainly Golden Fluid Acrylics on these pages with the addition of pink pearlescent acrylic ink.