Flower Power—Journaling with Julie 7

Lesson 7 from the Create Your Life Book Art Journal (that my sister, Julie, and I are working on in our respective craft rooms in our respective states) is about meditating on how you're feeling and what words come to mind as you meditate.

You're supposed to write down some words that come to you in pencil on the page...you can write anything and I wrote down tons of stuff I am worried about. I scribbled, I overlapped, I just spit it all out on the page. Then you're supposed to go over it and cover it up. So I did. I collaged with some papers, some die cuts,  and just a bunch of stuff. 

Then I painted over all of them with watered down acrylics.

Next, I drew some loose shapes, just hearts and flowers and outlined them in black gelato.

I went over all of it with white acrylic paint and it toned everything down too much. So I spent some time adding paint and tombow markers to make it more colorful again and smudging and adding extra doodles. I also outlined everything again with a sharpie. 

I'm happy with the final result, but it was a long time before I was. That yellow washi is from a defunct etsy shop, but I snagged probably five rolls in different colors and patterns. It just makes me happy.

Julie decide to use inspirational words on the first layer with colored pencil...faith, compassion, family. Then she added some papers, including scrapbook papers, vintage papers and some she had already painted and printed. Julie also used acrylic paints, using her fingers and then added white with a brayer to pull it all together.

    

She used white paste to stencil and added swirls for texture. Then she added a sharpie around the circles, which reminded her of flowers, so she used a Pitt brush pen to add branches and white gel pen for texture. I definitely like the contrast the marker gives and I didn't even push her to do it :) I also like how the contrast makes the flowers stand out and how she let the piece speak to her, as I really just drew flowers for no reason but she used the shapes to suggest what to make. 

This one was fun, I'm enjoying all the paper tearing and painting, but I think I need to let those papers show through a little more.

Happy Weekend!

Chark