Regrets

When I was a little girl, I used to get told quite often...especially by kids in school...that I looked like Wednesday Addams.

Basically me as a child...besides the movie money...

Looking back, it was probably true.  I had a big forehead, and a similarly turned up nose, and large dark eyes...and unrelated to Wednesday, I wore my hair in pigtails pretty often...I had LONG hair...I was always sitting on it otherwise.  If I could find a picture of me as a kid, you'd see what I mean.  Not identical, but close enough for others to notice the similarity.

Possibly because of this, I developed a (not so) secret (anymore) love of Christina Ricci, the actress who played Wednesday in the Addams family movies.  I like that I have embraced something that was kind of scarring as a child.  

Sadly, I no longer look like Christina Ricci.  Although if she'd gain like a hundred pounds, maybe I would...come on, Christina, help a sister out!

Even though Christina and I have gone our separate ways looks-wise, my mild obsession with her hasn't changed.  

The picture above was the face inspiration for the spread I have to show you today:

Ta-da!  I considered leaving it like this, but it was just not right...it bothered me.

"One of my main regrets in life is giving considerable thought to inconsiderate people." - Jarod Kintz
I really liked the quote (and feel like it related to how I've been feeling recently) and I thought it fit the expression on the girl's face, but it was so plain looking...

And I think the same was true of the face...it was ok, but just needed a little more...oomph...

So here's what I did to the quote side. At first, I just tried to color in the spaces of the letters with my Inktense pencils, but that wasn't enough.  Then I doodled over that with a black fine tip marker...the black stuck out too much... So, I went over the letter part with a lime poster paint Sharpie, which was better, but it didn't show up that well, so I went over that in black Sharpie...and that was good enough to make me stop working on the lettering part.  I also added some doodles in the corners in Inktense pencil and red poster paint Sharpie...and went squiggly around the edges with that same red Sharpie.

I didn't do much to the girl, but the changes I did make made a big difference in my eyes. I used white paint pen to give her eyes some highlights...that's a little thing that makes a HUGE impact...I am willing myself to never forget eyeball highlights again...  I also used the same red poster paint Sharpie from the quote side and added it to her lips, which made her look much less pale and much more dimensional (I think so anyway...).  And I used the red sharpie in her hair and on the outline of her shirt sleeves...  Just those few little changes made me much happier with the end result.  

Oh, and on a side note, I totally swiped a broken date stamp from the trash at work...you can see it in the bottom left corner of the girl's shoulder.  It actually said "Received" with the date underneath, but Regrets girl will probably be the only piece that gets the "Received" stamped on her, because it was too hard to hold it together...the date part is held together within the stamp, but the "received" kept falling off.  So sadly, it is sitting there all alone on my desk...waiting for me to accidentally knock it to the floor and lose it forever...  Ooh...unless I go right now and find something to glue it to...oh, yay!  Hooray for you brain, you figured it out!  OK...I'm off to rummage...  (maniacal laugh, MANIACAL LAUGH!!!)