GPP Street Team Crusade # 31 -Make it Your Own

How do I make it my own ? How do I use tools and pieces I have created on my own, tools I have bought, images created by other artists and mix them all together with bits of my imagination and creativity to create a piece that is all mine ?

That is the joy of art journal pages for me. No real rules. Just play and see what happens.
So here is how the process played out this morning. Take out the paint and play !

Make a background using some glued down pieces of scrap. Add an image of a fish eye that doesn't work after the paint is applied and scrap it off. Add more paint - ooh, that looks like a little map in the upper left hand corner...

Rip off the orange electric tape when the effect isn't quite what I want. Hmm, that white line may be a good place for journaling or a title of some sort.

Go through a file folder of images that I have collected along the way from magazines, old books, etc... See what jumps out at you, what seems to go with the ideas emerging from the background. In this case, this image from Oprah magazine appealed :

The words read "seek seek the source of the roaring the great replenishing, cleansing, life-giving river". Seeker...map...river...Inspiration, indeed !

I then looked through the drawers of rubber stamps, hand-made by me and store bought. Find this "seeker-girl" stamp from Magenta Stamps that was a gift from a friend at Christmas and has remained un-used so far.

Pick up the swallow stamp purchased from the $1.00 bin at Michaels. Flying seekers they shall be.

Play some more ! Compose your page - what fits where ? Create a map with a fine tipped black pen on that blob in the corner. Stamp the "seeker-girl" - argh, it kind of smeared. I am stamp challenged most of the time with those fine detailed stamps ! Oh well...
Add details with a ultra-fine tipped Elmers Painters pen. Now she looks a little less perfect - road weary maybe ? A little more mine, anyway ! ;)

More play...I keep going until it feels done somehow. Add phrase "Always a seeker be." in India ink with an old fashion fountain pen from my dad. I love the permanent black it leaves on the page, in spite of the permanent black it leaves on my fingers too. Add a little hard-to-read journaling with some gel pens. Throw in a spiral or two with that great white Elmer's pen. They always appear somehow, those whoopsy-do's of mine !

And there you have it - my very own art journal page !

I took the pieces...

and made it my own !

Join in the GPP Street Team fun - Number 31 and going strong ! It is a great place to be share bits of yourself, make your mark and cheer on the rest of the gang as they do the same !

Onward, Crusaders !

Priming the Pump through Play !

So my beautiful Russian grandmother, Bubbie as we called her, used to say "Vhen you don know vhat to do, do nothink ." I have always kind of liked that advice. When you are really unsure of what to do and you choose to wait it out, give it up to God, release and basically do "Nothink", I think you are doing what the Universe wants you to do. Just be, and the answer will come.

It is harder than it sounds to do "Nothink" though ! Especially for a control freak extraordinaire like myself !!! So I have come up with a new twist on Bubbie's quote. Here is mine : "When you don't know what to do, just PLAY until the answer comes." Not as cute with the whole Eastern European accent thing but it works for me ! Playing is my "doing Nothink" !


This morning I headed back into the studio, back into the Monday morning routine. I am very very lucky that I didn't have to head to a job I hate but I wasn't so happy about the fact that I was alone in the studio. My people play mates were all gone back to work ! I felt kind of deflated and not sure where to begin.


But it didn't take me long to remember by other playmates !!!

I dove in and had a Paint-Fest this morning ! I love doing this periodically. I chose a couple of colors and a variety of kinds of paint, get a huge pile of papers of all kinds ready and just start slapping paint around - with brushes, brayers, old credit cards, using stamps, stencils, sponges and any other tools that come to mind. I also keep my heat gun handy to dry some papers quickly so I can add layers and layers to them. I keep a big plastic table cloth on the floor and throw the papers on there to dry.

Here's a little sample of my play :

I pulled out a fun tool that I haven't used in a while and that I just love ! It is what I used to make the great black lines and "fake" handwriting on the pages above. It is a fine metal applicator tip used for writing on fabric and the nozzle head that screws right on to a bottle of acrylic craft paint. I have a spare bottle that I fill with black craft paint thinned with acrylic medium (you could use a little water too !) to make it flow well. I have had mine forever and I love the line detail you can get with it. Just be sure to rinse out the tips after you are done so that it doesn't get blocked with dry paint.

I found a similar little kit with bottles and tips for $9.00 at Dick Blicks if you want to use your Xmas money on a cool tool !

So after Paint Play, I had some great backgrounds for future use in journals, or in collages or whatever.

Here is the page I did today, inspired by the "Trust" cards I bought from Jen Lemen, that I am so loving everyday ! Today's card read "You can be kind to yourself." You bet I can !!!!

The background was done with a credit card dragging the paint down the page and a mask cut out in navy blue applied with a sponge.

I wrote out ways I can be kind to myself, like letting go of the perfectionist, and taking time to play !

Anyone who has every tried pumping water from an old fashioned water pump knows that you have to add water slowly into the pump, priming it to get the flow going. That's what my play time or my do "Nothink" time was about today, I think. Get that pump primed and we will be flowing before you know it !

Morning Glories

So I came outside on the deck this morning to take some shots of the Soul Journal Process I am following and had to stop and stare at these beautiful Morning Glories. The photo makes them look electric blue but really they are the deepest, richest purple. Such a treat to see the seeds you planted in late April be full-bloom plants in the July sunshine.

Chica looks suitably impressed, doesn't she ?

Anyhoo, I am still following the Soul Journal fun that Sarah has been prompting us to do over at Caspiana. One thing about this great, free-form play is that it is EXTREMELY MESSY !

Check out my worktable. Yikes !!!!! :

The fun I am having following along is well worth the mess and the eventual clean-up ! The prompts Sarah is providing right now is what she calls "Collage Potpourri". It is a whole bunch of suggestions for adding layers into your journal pages. Her main instruction is that we do as many of the suggestions as possible yet never in the same order on any given page.

One fun lesson was "Magazine stencils" which making stencils and/or masks from figures of people cut out of magazines. They give a cool ghostly impression on the page when you use a make-up sponge to dab paint around the shapes. I also loved the effect of leaving watered down acrylic paint pooling and dripping on the page and letting it dry for a couple of hours.

Here are page 1 & 2 of my 6 pages of Collage Potpourri. I also included a couple of "sweet spots" shots I found on the page.

Pages 1 & 2

Sweet spot on page 1 - wine label ephermera, yellow adjective scribbles, drippy white paint

Sweet spot page 2 - pooling orange paint, magazine stencil, bought stencil of #2

I am really loving the process. It is sometimes hard to keep the critic or control freak in me away as I play but giving myself over to the process is really good for me right now ! It feels like each session I sit down to is a mini-vacation ! I highly recommend it for helping our soul !

Cheers !