My pretty pretty page

Yet another incident of the magic of Art Journalling!
A fair while ago, I created a "pretty pretty background" in my art journal. I took some background colour block stripes from a fashion catalogue (roughly cut around the model) as my inspiration and created a page around that.
The images were chosen mainly because they coordinated with the colour scheme. There was no reason for the bird-cage apart from the fact that it looked good against the background. I went wild with my Uniball Signo white pen and my dot obsession and created a pretty pretty page. It was so pretty and so clean and perfect, I truly could not imagine I would ever find a suitable topic and was quite prepared just to leave it.

 Well, as it so often happens, after many months, I had a bright and exciting development in my life that I needed to journal about. My oldest child finally has started taking public transport to school - a huge change in our life. I have always driven my kids to and from school as well as any extra-cirricular activities after school. She is now ready to be independent and self-reliant and has confidently "gone out into the world".

Casually leafing through my journal looking for a background, I suddenly stopped on this page - the mood felt right, the amount of available journalling space seemed sufficient...and then it struck me that the cage (with the bird flying out) was utterly perfect for the subject matter!

I so love the spiritual nature of art journalling....Never ceases to amaze me :)

More recent pages

 Ever since I have 'inhabited' the online art-journalling world, I enviously read of the Art Retreats that US ladies partake of, I have held a dream of one day going on some sort of get-away with women where you switch-off from the responsibilities of life, feed off each other's creative energy and just play.

So recently, my dream came true, kind of...I went away on a creative week-end with 3 other women. It wasn't quite what I envisioned. The other ladies were all scrap-bookers, of a rather...umm...functional style....decorating was not a priority....This was not quite a warm fuzzy gathering, Brave Girls-style (if you aren't aware of this, my ultimate dream -http://bravegirlsclub.com/) I was doing my 'arty thing' on my own. It took me a while to get into the flow but I did manage to create something. The 2 spreads below are some of the work I got done that week-end.

This page was built on a very old background early on in this journal. It was blue and green, washed over with gesso and stamped with the swirly stamp. This background was left behind for quite a long time as nothing really suited it until now. On my creative week-end, I had a very limited box of supplies (3 of us car pooled with our respective craft supplies, personal items including bedding and food contribution for the week-end, so space was limited). I have read in the past that it is a good exercise to limit one's materials once in a while so this was my opportunity. Not easy! To my horror I forgot to pack any scrap-booking (printed) papers. Brought a stack of serviettes (my favourite layering element) and my Art Papers (where I use up my paint left overs). Surprisingly, I found this background a 'home' under these limiting circumstances. I had the vintage-looking lady magazine image for a few years. I really liked her dress and overall look. Inspiration struck and she finally made it into my journal. The tulip and the yellow/red/green pieces are a serviette, craft paper strips, script stamp, bubble wrap stamping and doodling. Voila! Very happy with this page as the subject matter is very topical in my life at the moment and it fitted into this page well.

This page was started at the week-end away and finished off at home. I took advantage of being with scrap-booking ladies to borrow their puzzle pieces punch. I used my Art Paper for the pieces as well as the art doll's dress. I also used a discarded  red wavy border card-stock piece and arted it up. I also picked up the white heart punchie off the floor. Love that perverse satisfaction I get from using scraps in mixed media ;)

The original magazine face was way too pretty and a bit soul-less (especially after I decided what this page was going to be about) I'm very happy with the 'improvement'. At home, I doodled, added rub-ons and the quote from my stash of magazine lettering (my husband calls it my "ransom notes") :)

I feel that the lady is a bit unfinished, I think I lost interest in this page and gave myself permission to leave it and move on ;)

Some recent art journalling

A page of many layers. Not a "pretty page", a bit of a hodge-podge of layers over many months. It began as many of my pages do with me randomly spreading left-over paint from other work. There were freehand paint doodles which are now mostly covered up, tissue paper, loosely torn circles with inked edges and stamps. As I came back to this page and added more it didn't get any less chaotic. So recently I decided it was time to finish it off, especially as I had a topic to journal that seemed to suit the page. I added the hand and the butterfly, journalled, added the beautiful quote and decided I was fairly happy with the outcome.

This is one of my most favourite pages ever. After a bit of a break from art journalling, I watched some videos by a new artist I discovered via Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Art Journal Everyday series. Surprisingly, this was the first time I came across the guest artist Janine http://studiojanine.net I'm a visual learner and watching a few of her videos really got my creative juices going. I pretty much replicated some of the elements used in her pages just for the exercise and the fun of breaking out of my usual style. "Discovered" a very simple (but oh so satisfying) technique of putting down a few blobs of paint and using a plastic fork to fan it out in all directions.
Anyway, somehow in this process of trying a different style, I ended up using a colour combination that was not what I would have normally chosen (which incidentally was not at all Janine's colours). Not sure how it happened but this page looks so vibrant and makes me really happy. Unfortunately some of the colour is lost in the pic and I don't use photoshop to be able correct it.