Pick-an-Emotion - Any Emotion !

So I have offically joined Leah's Creative Every Day Challenge. I have played along many times but never posted directly to her link page. I felt like it was time for me to commit to something, and I know I will appreciate being part of a group of artists all working towards making creativity a part of their daily lives in whatever form ! Leah is a wonderful guide through the experience and has even recently added in some loose themes to follow along with each month.

I wanted to make my committment to my creative time official and to celebrate how much my creativity and my play time help me feel, help me heal and help me live my life more fully. Appropriately, Leah's theme this month is "play" !

I have also been enjoying seeing the art work that is resulting from the art journal prompts Misty Mawn has been posting everyday for the month of January. I haven't been doing them every day as many have, but there is a lot of inspiration there for me.

This week, Misty encourages us to think about our emotions as we create our pages and to put our emotions into the work. This kind of happens naturally for me - it is what I use my journal for most of the time- to pour out my feelings or sometimes, to try and change my feelings.

Here are two recent pages I have done that definitely both have a lot of my emotion in them.

The first one is called "Gross Gordon" :

"Gross Gordon" was created when I was feeling angry, frustrated and disgusted. I was mad at how some people who have been very hurt in their lives choose to take it out on others, to" pluck their wings off", so to speak. As a person who tends to turn my hurt inwards instead of out (not a good thing either !!!), I have a very hard time forgiving, and definitely cannot excuse people who hurt people who don't deserve it by putting them down, chipping away at their confidence and just being generally mean for no reason ! Especially when the person they attack is weaker than them!!

Oh, oh, Gross Gordon is getting to me again ! Better go make another anger piece ! ;-)

Anyway, I think the anger shows in the color scheme - very limited for me and the grey and black with that wash of red say anger to me. So do the "teeth" surrounding the picture.

The second piece is about a similar theme but a very different emotion. This one is called : "little bird says" (it was made this morning) :

I had great fun doing this page. It was really play time ! It was definitely a many stepped process to create the background. I used all kinds of toys for that ! Stamps, stencils, black gesso, multiple layers of paint, etc. I love the blues, purples and turquoises of the back ground. The little bird door is made of some painted paper glued to pink card stock. It is attached with turquoise duct tape and even has little sequins in the corners and a strip of pink ribbon. I stamped little bird's door and her secret with my favorite alphabet stamps.

The emotion that I think shines through this piece is Hope ! I have been feeling a lot more hopeful for the last few days and I think the piece shows that in the colors, the message and even the use of the little bird...hope that the darkness that has been plaguing me for a while is definitely clearing and that with a little more self-love, a little more "nest" time, I will soon be ready to push myself out of the nest and use those wings as they were intended !

Lost Wings, Found Feathers

So when I had finished the GPP Street Team Crusade # 20 - Casting Call, I had this beautiful white wing to use for a journal page. I immediately had the image of an angel who had lost one of her wings. This is the journal page I created with the cast.

Loss

Then I found an interesting connection to a page I had done a while back using a photo image from a magazine :

I Found A White Feather On My Path Home

I wasn't sure what the feather was all about at the time but that was what the muses sent that day! I did love the end results of this page though. In the original magazine photo, the child had long blond hair and was leaning on a carousel ride. What I liked about it was the posture and position of the figure. I covered the photo lightly with gesso and then painted over it in acrylics, creating this new figure so far from the original.

I knew these two pieces were connected by the white wing and the white feather. These two pieces became the beginnings of a story for me. Here's where I am so far :

An angel in Heaven loses one of her wings because she spends too much of her Heavenly time wishing she could be back on Earth. By the time the wing falls back to the ground, all that is left is one white feather. On Earth, there is a child who is full of sorrow about how dark the world has become. One day, the child finds a white feather on her path home. She thanks the angels above for the beautiful gift. She makes a vow to use her gift to bring as much heavenly light into her world as she can. The angel in Heaven receives a new wing and realizes that her wish has come true. Part of her is now back on Earth, and will live on through the angelic acts of this little girl. The Angel and her loss, the little girl and her dark sorrow, and the fall of the White Wing were all a part of the Plan.

Hope you enjoyed story time ! Happy Monday !

GPP Street Team Crusade #20 - Casting Call

So I have been having such fun with the GPP Street Crusades that I had to keep going - all the positive exchanges are addictive, not to mention the creative pleasures ! This Crusade took a little longer for me to get to. I was thinking about how to get hold of a second blender to make the paper pulp - ours gets used often for smoothies and I don't think paper pulp goes well with fruit ! Anyway, I was planning to hit the yard sales and flea markets this weekend to find one (may still do that !) but decided to give the tissue technique a try first !

I had a package of dollar store tissue paper I had bought somewhere along the way. When I opened it, what I found was not silky glossy tissue paper but something between mulberry paper and paper towel. So perfect ! The fibrous texture made beautiful feathery tears.

I had a bag of old jewelry treasures that my mom's manfriend, Lindell from CO, had collected for me at flea markets and then sent via snail mail to my mom in Montreal. Those babies have been around ! (Thanks so much, Lindell !). I searched the bag and found these wonderful metal charms, the perfect molds !!

I tore up the wonderful cheapy paper and got to work with my paint brush and water, filling in the charm molds . Then I left it for about 6 hours for drying time.

It worked like a charm (pun intended, tee, hee !) ! I loved the results, especially the angel wing ! Love that feathery texture !

Then I thought about using these casts in my journal. Would the heaviest of the pages crush them ? How could I make them a little tougher ? I got out the gel medium and very gently painted a couple of coats onto the top, embossed surface with a dry brush. When it dried, the casts had hardened just a little. Hopefully they will stand up to my journals wear and tear !

The final step was color. I used an eye shadow sponge brush and applied some colored chalks. That left things a little flat which wasn't quite what I wanted. Then I got out the Lumiere Metallic Fabric Paints and used the same sponge brush to dry brush the metallics on. I love the effects ! Again, I think the angel wing is my favorite - the pearl metallic paint makes it look heavenly (puns again, love um !), don't you think ?

Now all that's left to do is to make some journal pages to use my paper casts in. I have a vision of a page with an angel who has lost one of her wings... Stay tuned to see what I come up with !