Born With Bones and Heart Fused in Deep

I have started another art journal project. Like DLP, this one also has an amazing community of like-minded artists. Every week you get new prompts. We'll see if I make more than one page! LOL!

Check it out here: www.getmessyartjournal.com

I have wanted to add more meaning to my art and telling stories on my pages for a long time.  Ummm...might my blog name suggest my intentions too, perhaps?  ;) I enjoy creating pretty pages, but often they don't have a story. That's why I got interested in this project. 

The first prompt really stretched me creatively and mentally. Get Messy works on six week seasons, with this season's theme bring introspection. 

The dictionary defines it like this: 

So that's what I'll be trying to do. Communicate thought via art journal pages. Maybe they'll be pretty, but they might not be. ;)

So back to my page I completed. 

I go ahead and do the art prompt, make ink blots, and then it sits, me staring at it for a day.  

What do I see?

I see layers of hearts.

I see two pink hearts on each side. 

I see a white one in middle. 

I see a teal arrow pointing down. 

What am I thinking when I look at those blots?

Layers of hearts make me think of things I feel deeply, but keep a lot of it inside. 

Layers of hearts also make me think of all the friendships I cherish.

The two hearts make me think of my marriage. 

Two hearts combined into one. 

Which makes me think of our center: God the Creator. Jesus. The Holy Spirit. 

The mystery of all this that I can't fathom most of the time, but keeps me on my knees, and always evaluating life from that worldview. 

So the teal shape in the middle represents Christ in me, in us, in my relationship to everything.

As I play, adding textures and paint and words, more things pop into my head. 

Then I start to play, getting MESSY. Just playing. Play. Get messy. Repeat. :)

I cut out a laser copy of a photo of myself, and glue it to the heart on right. Then I paint it over with the same pink, as I want to keep the pink heart shape for the overall look. I don't want my vision to "stop" on the photo of me, as I don't want this to be the center.

I peruse the first poem in the altered book I am using and find neat phrases that speak of looking back through my life, which is what I also want to do in this project.

The poem is called The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg.

I spy a cool stencil lying around of the earth encircled by the planets, a StencilGirl club stencil: 

July 2015 The Sky's the Limit by Mary Nasser

 and it gives me the idea of Christ as my center in all things, so I stencil with pink paint on the white center heart and the surrounding book page.

Born with bones and heart fused in deep.

 Hugging the little ball of Earth

Mixed from a bowl of sky blue dreams

Shimmering with phantoms

Out of joybells and headaches

mortgages, house rent, groceries

new generations with names

The living flowing breath of the history

Flicker in the mirrors a few moments

Not sure if my newly "found" poem makes any sense, but each phrase speaks to me, as it gives me the feel of my present life as a mom with young kids and of my generally happy past.

The mesh-like texture on the hearts is white paint through a different stencil, symbolizing loosening the grip of my heart on the things that are inside - a cage, so to speak. Does that make sense to you like it does to me? heehee

April 2016 club stencil by Mary Beth Shaw Private Collection 16.2

I see teal-coloured paint on the under paper (deli paper) dried up and it's peeling off the paper, which makes me think of peeling back the layers of my brain and heart. That'll work! I need to add that to my page! So I brush on matte medium in the teal area above and adhere it. This is FUN!!

I add extra layers around each shape with lots of paint. The pink paint is quite transparent, but I want it opaque and heavier, so I add 3D Matte Gel medium by Prima to it, and hand-paint around the hearts, adding white gesso to create more depth of colour.

Lastly I add white dots around each shape with a white paint pen.

As I was blogging this, all the while looking at my page, and after I took the pictures, I decide that the center teal needs to be an arrow, so I go in to add lines in a diagonal fashion with an Imagine Crafts Brushtix chisel tipped sponge. Cool tool!

The arrow symbolizes pointing down, into my heart, and read what is there. See after picture, below.

I'm very pleased with how this all turned out. What a great exercise of INTROSPECTION. :)

And here some shots of my altered book cover in progress. It isn't finished yet!

The coolest product. You blurp it on, then put your heat gun to it, making it puff up. :)

And there you have it. I enjoyed writing this post as much as I did creating the page. :) 

Until next time!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

Be the Color in Someone's Grey Day: Week 26 of DLP

The Documented Life Project

Week 26 

I used my handy dandy Sakura watercolor brush loaded with full strength Dylusions ink for this week's spread. I have the Zesty Lemon (see the yellow day strips?) and the Calypso Teal (the week header) in these great brushes, but will add six more once they get here from www.dickblick.com. Can't wait. Use them everywhere! I just love the Dylusions colors, so having them available as a brush is great. (I don't use sprays as much as brushes and pencils, as they're not as versatile.)

The right hand side is the tip-in, as shown in my previous post. See the LIFT tab there? I added that just now, so that when you page through my art journal, you can see there's something to see underneath this rose. :)

I chose to go all yellow with the day strips this time, instead of alternating different colors like I have in the previous weeks. I like how versatile my design is. I can vary it enough that I don't get bored. :)

This is how it looks with the tip-in open. Three pages. I chose to add a bit of teal and pink to my journaling so that everything matches.

Those pink doodles on the right hand side are so awfully crooked. LOL It's driving me a little bit bonkers, looking at it. I better just not look, huh? Not changing it now!

Be the color in someone's grey day. 

I'm off to supper with my family, so will have to finish post later. See ya!

Four and a half hours later...

Hi, I'm back. :)

I doodled these flowers on watercolor paper, watercolored them in, cut out and glued onto this previously gelli-printed music sheet. (It's the other side of the rose page.) Added more details with Sharpie, Twinkling H2O's. couple more yellows with varying kinds of watercolor pencils, added white details with Uniball Signo gel pen.
Doodled stems and circly things, and added more watercolor in different areas. It was really a project I kept on going back to, adding this and that. :)

I love how the music notes on the bottom right are peaking out from the background paint. :) I chose to go with a layout with lots of white space. White space gives your eyes room to rest, and also makes the flowers really be the center of the scene.

This week's header is filled with a tangle called using my Dylusions ink filled Sakura watercolor brush in Calypso Teal.

I don't the name of the tangle, but it's a cross between
FLUTTER TILE
FIFE
FLOURISH
NETTING
PUF
and
BALES
:)
I just used a simple label sticker for the title. Handy and quick. :)

Some of the pink paint bled through to the page on the left. Oh well. Adds character, right?

The title in hot pink was written with a Montana acrylic paint pen Gleaming Pink.

The background is a Gelli-print on vintage music paper. I think I was just cleaning off the plate, or from multiple printings. Only a bit of the paint was left over. I figure that makes for a nice subtle background. :)
Well, that's it Lovelies!
I'm looking forward to creating next week's pages. How about you?

Have a great evening.
Anna

The Documented Life Project

Hello from annawhoisawayfromthisblogalot! I have been busy creating, and have not taken the time to update here for a long time. I am into art journaling right now, and so my digi scrapping has been put in the corner. :0  

To those of you who are doing the Documented Life Project! I am up to my eyeballs with life right now, so I don't have time to write a full post right now. I DO want to share my whole process and post more pics for those who have requested, but for now I'll provide the printables and links to the info you wanted. Thanks! :)

For the journal prompt by Ali Edwards that I used on page pictured above ^^, click HERE .

For those of you wanted a printable version of the calendar, click the following links to download:

Doodled Calendar with Days of the Week - left side

Doodled Calendar with Days of the Week - right side

 Doodled Calendar Blank Days - left side

Doodled Calendar Blank Days - right side

So, you could print off these pages and use as a stencil template, or just print them onto your actual art journaling paper. Have fun. Would love to see what you do with them! 

Thanks, ya'all! Now I'm gonna get out of my pjs, make lunch for my kidlings, get them off my iphone, clean up the house, pack up my art journaling stash, and go visit my twin sis at their new house they just finished building. Whoo hoo! She has a library with a craft table in the center. 

We will play, we will play amidst the beautiful light coming in through her plentiful and large windows! The kids will be playing with their new Rainbow Looms, and sliding down all the dirt hills they've got at their place. We have eight feet of snow in these northern parts!

For more info on this project, see my new link to the left, right at the top of this page. 

Skip, skip, skip to my lou...umm, I mean skip, skip, skip to my twin to play with my art journal!

Love, Anna

annawhocropsalot

:) 

Art Journaling

I have started a new thing. It encompasses all I love: scrapbooking, journaling, drawing, painting, mixed media, smash books, etc.

It's art journaling!

 So, had to share my latest post. :) I used Copics (another new love), hybrid scrapbooking paper, painting, rub-ons, alcohol ink, and stickers.

The book I used was an old Reader's Digest book. To accommodate the added thickness of the pages,  I ripped out some pages.

 My daughter played with my new Copics, drew a heart, I saw it, loved it, drew one myself. :) Then today, I went out and bought more colors. Added some doodling to brighten it up. :)

 I painted Gesso for the base over the pages, stuck two pages together while still wet, pulled them apart, and oh, liked the texture I got! (This was done by mistake. Hadn't planned on the two pages sticking together.)

 More gorgeous texture here...

My hubby is in Arizona for work, so he wasn't home again for the second year in a row to celebrate our anniversary. It's seventeen years today! I've been married almost half my life! Hubby is an amazing man. Very blessed to have a stable guy I can lean on, as I can get a little crazy!

It's basically just adding your artsy doodles and snippets to a page. Rub-ons by Basic Grey, snippets of paper I had on hand...

 Those eyes? Found a great tut for drawing Manga-style eyes with Copic markers. Loved the outcome. As I only had the neutral grey set of the Copics when I drew them, I chose to make the eyes black and white. :)

And love that quote! Anything C.S. Lewis is so very profound and deep. Had to include it.

There, pages three and four of my altered art journal. :)

Have a happy Thanksgiving! Starting my 40 Days of Thankfulness tomorrow. See if I can stick to it. LOL