Life Book 2013 March Lessons

I'm not quite done with my first March assignment, taught by Tamara Laporte - I must wait for some alphabet stamps to arrive. I'm probably going to paint the border around the heart with a darker brown, possibly with yellow/gold highlights. There are messages of gratitude to various family and friends written in the tubes glued to the page.

 

My alphabet stamps arrived, and I like the darker paint around the heart. The word "Gratitude" is stamped onto twill tape.

 

   

Today I finished my Week 11 assignment, taught by Michelle Kral (Mitsy B). For some reason, I had trouble with this one - not with addressing the bad aspects of myself, but making an "ugly" page. For the cover (below), I chose sickly green, yellow and black paints, and scraped those colors on with a credit card. I added mud brown spray inks, then splotched on yellow ochre and lettuce green paint. And I liked it. I didn't think it was ugly, and I was ok with that. I like it better that way.

 

For the inside of this pop-up page, I continued with browns, ochres and greens (teal this time). I used my alphabet stamps for the first time. And yeah, it bugged me that I misaligned some of the letters (refer to the "Perfectionist" quality). It was fun making the pop-up shapes, too. Michelle provided templates for these.

   

Yesterday (April 6) was a productive day. Not only did I finish the two previous lessons, but I also completed this one, taught by Mindy Lacefield. It went pretty well for the most part, until I sprayed a workable fixative on the whole thing and some stamped ink from an underneath layer bled through the face on the shorter girl. It was an interesting look, but it was not what I had in mind and I was quite peeved. So I did the best I could to paint over the stains. Lesson learned - spraying VERY LIGHTLY the first few times might have prevented this, or possible using gesso instead of white acrylic paint for the face.

The first layer on the background was a poem by Rumi, which filled the page entirely with overlapping handwriting in a variety of colors. I've seen quite a few references to Rumi on various journaling sites, so I had to look him up. Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's importance is considered to transcend national and ethnic borders. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. In 2007, he was described as the "most popular poet in America." 

  

This week was an video interview with Dion Dior. What an amazing and inspiring woman!

 

More Art Journaling Explorations HERE