A Happier Place

I've got a bunch of stuff to share this time.  

First, I'm going to share my Journal 52 (J52) page from last week.  The prompt was to "make a page that's all about time" and here's what I did:

"over time"

I got the inspiration for this page from this song, "Over Time" by Lucinda Williams (you may want to turn down your speakers, btw, because the tremolo on this song is pretty loud):

I had some sad-sackery insights into this page and song and was going to get all philosophical and blah, blah, blah...but then I stopped myself.

I've been on a binge of depressing stuff for WAY too long, and I'm going to try to pull myself out of that habit.  It gets old, you know?  

So I'm sorry for the long term wiener-ness that's been happening on the blog and let's try to have a binge of good stuff for a while, ok? :)

For this week's Documented Life (DLP) the prompt was to "use a white pen prominently on your page" and here's what I did:

The right page is actually a dark purple, but for some reason it's showing up funky...I don't know why...camera user error is my best guess...

This spread was a little bit of a battle for me.  I had done something else completely, but the pages sucked up the white pen and it was really faint in the end.  I decided to start over and painted over everything with acrylic paint.  I like it much better now.

I love the way the background shows through the paint on this and that the previous layer picked up too!

On the left page especially, you can see parts of the original stuff I had done (and the SmashBook image, a rotary phone, comes through as well)...I think that's pretty neat.  And I like the way the blue and orange set each other off so well...oh complimentary colors, you are making my day!

"Don't you know yet?  It is your light that lights the world." - Rumi

I saw that quote on Pinterest (where else?) and thought it was a good one to use with the white pen on dark backgrounds.  

Wouldn't that be such a nice thing to have someone say to you?  "Don't you know yet?"  I like that...  Sometimes we don't see our own good things...but someone out there does.  The "yet" gets me right in the feels, because he's saying 'one day you'll see it too'...that's such a nice thought!

And finally, this week's J52 prompt, "Create a page that has a lot of texture":

I was inspired by the fortune cookie fortune I got on Friday: "Now is a good time to explore the nearest coastline."

Can I just tell you how very stinking happy this piece makes me?  Cause OOH BABY!!!  I love looking at it!  Seriously, like running around the house holding it above my head going "TRA-LA-LA" because I love it that much!

Here are the textures I used (I tried to pack as many as I could into this one spread): crackle paint (thick layer for big cracks), coarse texture gel, glitter glue (cheapie kind) and Stickles  for the sand textures, gloss gel medium  (tinted and not tinted) and acrylic paint with micro beads added to it for the water, THIS aluminum foil technique for the palm tree trunk (I used brown paint instead of black), book pages, handmade paper, and crackle paint (thin layer for smaller cracks) for the palm leaves, and Crackle Accents, Enamel Accents (the black holes) and Souffle Pen (white accents on the holes) for the coconuts.

Be impressed because I cut all the shapes out freehand, and if you know me, you know how much I don't care for snipping! :)

I like it so much I have to show you two pictures, because this one shows better just how shiny the water is...ooh  I can't stand how much I like this!

I did this piece on Grungepaper (from Tim Holtz/Ranger).  The dimensions of it is 12x6, and so it's a weird shape compared to the rest of my J52 pages...it kind of makes me love it more...

On a side note, I don't know if anybody else is familiar with Grungepaper, but if you know of any technique tutorials using it, would you pass them along my way?  It's got such a strange feel to it that I'm not super sure how to work with it...it's not like paper, it's not like chip board, it's not like cardboard...it's strange stuff!  I'm at a loss as to how to use it in the 'intended' way...

At the end of this month, my mom and I are going to the beach for four days away, and I am so excited and ready to go!  I've been looking forward to this trip since last year!  And now it's just a few short weeks away and I am in kid-going-to-Disneyland mode...aka I wake up at 4 AM going "Is it today? Is it today? How much longer? Are we there yet?"  

It's probably a big part of the reason I like this spread so much...it reminds me of the beachy goodness just around the corner...even though there are no coconut palms where we are going (they have Palmetto palms...which are very short and a little anti-climactic if you are expecting the big tall palms)!  Coconuts or not, I'm ready for the beach to go!!!

Minneapolis...Face 3 of 29

Day 3 of 29 Faces and the 30 posts in 30 days do-over!  

I've got a face I'm SUPER happy with for you all today:

"I've been waiting for you to come back..."

I'd like to find a way to say how awesome I feel about this page without breaking my arm patting myself on the back!  Let's just say that I'm as surprised as you all are, how about that???  *insert a million angels singing and sunshine rays shining down on this page*

I picked the words for the page out of this song (Minneapolis by Lucinda Williams):

I always listen to music, especially when I'm arting it up...and I have to say that Lucinda Williams is one of my all-time favorite artists...I would go so far as to say that she's in the top three, if not number one on my list...and that's saying a lot, because I LOVE all kinds of music and it's hard for me to play favorites with singers and songwriters.  But 99.99999999% of the time, lyrics are my favorite thing about the music, and Lucinda's songs always have amazing lyrics.  That last verse especially gets to me:  "A dozen yellow roses All that's left in Minneapolis. I wish I'd never seen your face or heard your voice.  You're a bad pain in my gut.  I wanna spit you out.  Open up this wound again Let my blood flow red and thin Into the glistening Into the whiteness Into the melting snow of Minneapolis"  Can't you feel the sadness in it?  It just moves me so much!

At any rate, back to the journal page, I used a 2B pencil and black and gray watercolors (cake type...I think they are called pan watercolors, but doesn't calling them cakes make you feel so much better?  How can cakes be bad???) to make him.  You KNOW I'm happy when I don't want to even add color!  That NEVER happens!  (The pink at the right side of the picture is not on the page, it was over-spray from a previous page that got on the edge of the back cover and some of the later pages, but it's not actually on the page with this dude.)  There are only two things that bother me ever so slightly about this page, the shading on the nose...I think I could have done a little more with that...and the ear.  The ear bothers me the most...but in my defense, I couldn't see the ear in the photo reference I used; it was blurred out.  Well, let me just show you the picture I used: 

See?  That ear is all blurry and I couldn't get it right!  I will look for non-blurry ears in the future!

I know my page doesn't look like the reference photo, but I am still REALLY happy with the end result.  It definitely came out looking like a human, so that's a positive.  I'm pretty sure you can tell it's a male human...and masculine faces are harder to draw than feminine ones (at least they seem to be to me).  And I even thinks it looks like an attractive male human...not a horribly disfigured elephant man/Quasimodo...So overall, even if I stopped here (WHICH I'M NOT GOING TO DO), 29 Faces would still feel like a success for me...That's how happy I am with this face!

So before I go, don't forget that if you'd like to do my 30 posts in 30 days challenge do-over with me to please leave your link in the comments.

Also, if you've followed along with the blog for a while, you know I've been PROMISING to have a little giveaway when I reached 5,000 page views.  Well, 5,000 page views kind of blew past me when I wasn't looking!  Thank you sooooooo much for helping me get there!  Since I missed that milestone, what I decided to do is have the giveaway at the end of the month.  I have already started putting together a fun prize package...but you have to wait to see it...  On day 29 (since there's 29 faces), I will post a picture of the goodies (and of my 29th face, of course!) and then on the 30th, I will draw the winning name and announce it on the blog!  So, what do you have to do to be entered in the drawing?  If you're not already following me, it would be fantastic if you would follow my blog (I feel like I'm trying to start a cult when I say that) and then come back on Day 29...September 29, 2013, just to be clear...to see the prize and leave a comment so I know you want to be entered for a chance to win!  That's it, just two little things!  I'm really excited that you all care enough about the blog and my art that you keep coming back and checking in on what's happening...I wish I could give everybody prizes!  Big squishes and eager anticipation happening on my end!!!