Rising Water and Keeping My Eyes On the Prize

Today, I've got my spread for the DOCUMENTED LIFE art challenge of Acrylic Paint and the prompt of Cry Me A River.  Here's what I made:

"Let the waters rise and hide the tears I've cried for that bad man."

The words on the page are from this song (except I changed it from 'woman' to 'bad man') by Justin Townes Earl, "Let The Waters Rise" :

I just love him...he can do no wrong in my eyes!

I used acrylics on the sweeping/ombre  brush stoke bits and the tags, but watercolor for the eye and the leaky tears.

I am kinda excited about the eye because, while it's pretty simple, I think I got it to look a little more 3D than I usually do...so YAY!  I love it when I notice that my hard work has started to pay off!

Along those lines...the 'hard work paying off' lines, I mean...I want to invite you over to check out my new blog endeavor, NOSTALGIC CAKE.  Before you freak out and start to panic, I'm still going to keep up with this blog (at least as well as I have been lately...which is not very unfortunately..I've been caught up in a little side project that I'm not quite ready to share just yet).

So, why start a new blog then?

 As you may know, I've had a big life change recently.  When that happened, basically all my stuff minus art supplies, clothes, and a few childhood memorabilia-type things stayed at the house while I...evacuated it.  It's worked out fine thus far, because I'm staying with my mom for the time being and she lets me use her stuff...horay!  But in a relatively short amount of time (6-10 months...ish), I'm going to have to find my own place to live.

You may have heard me mentioning *read complaining* about the fact that I am really having a hard time with this transition period I'm in.  I've been feeling uncomfortably unsettled and disordered...and I realized that I should be able to do something about it...and then I realized...of course I can do something about it.

A while back on this blog, I mentioned how I had bought three pieces of furniture (and my mom was going to refurbish them for me, so they were at her house and I actually have a desk and two dressers in addition to my clothes and art stuff).  I really love these pieces!  I mentioned that, one day, I'd like to have a home where no matter where I looked, my eyes would land on something that brought me that same kind of joy.  I want my house to declare who I am as a person...and I've realized that, even though I may not have the actual house yet, I can slowly start gathering the objects to fill it...and not just to fill it, but to make it into the place I dream about.

And so Nostalgic Cake was born...a place where I could keep tabs on my slowly growing inventory of joyfulness, and, of course, share it with the amazing friends who have been rooting for me all along!

Cover up and Feel Alive

Today I've got my spread for the DOCUMENTED LIFE prompt from February 14 to share with you.  The theme for February was "Layers You Will Love", the art challenge was "Cover Up Good Stuff", and the journal prompt was "Going Undercover".

Here's what I made:

"The hardest thing you will ever have to do is to let yourself feel alive."

I got the words for today's spread from this song "Time to Leave" by Melissa Ferrick:

I used lyrics from this song in another spread recently, but these ones are so good, I figured it'd be alright...

Do you see the theme in the images?

When I thought about the prompt "Going Undercover", images of people shrinking back into themselves came to mind...of people hiding...all kinds of negative connotations.

For me, this spread is about the things that hold us back from being "alive"...from being our true selves.

On the left hand page, there's the girl who's constantly looking to someone else for the answers.  Then there's the girl who's always looking back on the past with regret (although I do love that artwork, she looks so melancholy).  And at the bottom, the girl who's always longing for what she can't have (Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth...one of my absolute favorite pieces ever).  On the right page, there's the girl who's constantly finding something else to do so that she can ignore what needs to be done.  And then the little girl hiding herself away because she's afraid.  And lastly, there's the girl in the swing...she's got it all figured out: to be exactly who and what she wants to be.

I think sometimes we (or I) make things harder than they have to be...we over-complicate what should be simple.  Like the song alludes to, it takes time and making up our own mind to see things clearly.  

It's not easy...it should be, but it's not.  

For me, I think that's why it takes us being...not brave (or not only brave)...but fed up...to be so sick of something that it's literally a knee-jerk reaction to have to make it change.  And then the challenge is to not let those nagging doubts or bad habits creep back in and push us back into our little holes.

We only get one go round in this life...I don't want to spend any more time shrinking back or covering up.  I am working on being the girl on the swing, boldly being whatever it comes to my mind to be.

Starting To Change

It's been forever, hasn't it?  

It sure seems like it!

I've been adjusting (more on that later) and I actually managed to do a couple of art journal pages, so I thought I'd share them with you...as proof that I'm not dead and all that...

The first page is for JOURNAL 52...week 5...the television prompt, posted way back in January...yes, I am that behind...shame of shames!

"You spent half your life trying to turn the other half around."  -Kathleen Edwards

What does that page have to do with TV you ask?  The words are from this song by Kathleen Edwards, called "Six O'Clock News":

I am not a TV watcher by nature...even when I do, I've got to do something else while I watch...and I wasn't really feeling the TV prompt...until I remembered that song and the line "You spent half your life trying to turn the other half around."  Which I really like and had more to do with where I'm at right now than any other TV related thing, so I just went with it.

And then there's the DOCUMENTED LIFE spread...also from way back in January...I feel so behind!  (Probably because I AM THAT BEHIND!)  The Art Challenge for this spread was "writing" and the Journal Prompt was "words with friends" and here's what I came up with:

You can't see it very much, but I used writing as my beginning layer...it only shows through in a few places.

I got the words on this page from this song, "Time to Leave" by Melissa Ferrick:

And I think they are some wise words indeed:

"You can't fix anyone else, babe."

"Being a friend means knowing when it's time to leave"

Aside from getting a little art journaling in, KAT MCNALLY'S APRIL MOON (still time to join!) has started, and I've been pondering the prompts in my head...she's got such a knack for helping you get to the meat of things, instead of just fluttering on the surface...she just asks the right questions, I guess.  

Kat's Reverb14 prompts last year had a very profound affect on me.  In fact, they are part of the answer to the first April Moon prompt: 

"That's when I knew that this chapter of my life had ended.  And now I was free to..." 

The thought of leaving my husband is something that had occurred to me many times...but there was always a reason not to...me talking myself out of it with one thing or another.  Because it's wasn't something to do lightly.  So I stayed and things just kept piling up and piling up and I stayed and things piled.  And for years of my life, I waited and hoped things would change.  But they didn't change.  And so I decided that maybe if I changed, then it would be an inspiration to others and then they would change too.  But that's not what happened.

There was a point last year, during Reverb14, where I was sitting there typing my answer to one of the prompts and I thought to myself 'I don't want to live this life'.  I was so, so tired of trying and trying and having nothing to show for it.  I'd worked hard to make things better...but I was the only one who was changing...everything around me stayed very much the same...despite my needing it to be otherwise...despite my pleas for something/anything to be different.  

And something in me just snapped...I knew that nothing was ever going to change.  I knew that I was always going to live this same sad existence every day and have that for my life.  And I knew that I did not want to live that life forever.  There had been so much opportunity for things to have ended differently between my husband (Andy) and myself, but Andy was comfortable with the way things were...he didn't want anything to be different, and he didn't seem to care very much about what I wanted. This is not different from the entirety of my marriage...the difference is that I was not ok with it anymore, and I was not willing to keep trying.  He made his choice, and I'm not mad about it...I just wasn't going to let him make my choices anymore.  I needed things to be different and I wasn't going to be the only one compromising any more.  One person can't hold up the world.

And so I left, and I've been staying with my mom since January.  And in some ways, I feel in transition still...not settled...because this is not the end of the line for me...I will get my own place eventually and have my own space and take care of myself completely by myself...and so as I sit here and type away on mom's computer, in mom's house, I feel like a bit of a transient.  

But the thing is, I know now that I am free to do things differently.  That I won't always have this feeling of unrest...that I will find a place to put down roots.  I don't have to do the same things I've always done.  I can make another choice.  I can forge my own path.  And I'm working on it.

And that leads me to the second prompt for April Moon:

 "Knowing what I know now, I would tell my ten-years-ago self:"

Not to damn wait.  

Ten years ago, I was a year and a half into my marriage, and had pretty well already started to have doubts about it.  Instead of listening to my gut, I listened to other people.  People, who despite having the best of intentions, didn't really have the right to decide what I should do.  I chose to listen to them, and I lost a lot of time and opportunities.

I would tell my former self to get it together...pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get to it.  Nobody in life is going to hand you what you want, and you don't get anything by sitting there wishing for it.  If you want it, go work for it.  Don't let anybody tell you who you are and don't let anybody guilt you into being something that you don't want to be.

I'd tell her the same thing I am telling myself today:  Figure out what it is that you want and go get it.  Knuckle down, quit your whining and make things happen.  You don't get to blame anyone else ever again.  Whatever you end up with, good or bad, is because of your actions or lack of them, so whatever choice you make, you better be ready to make it work.

And on that forceful note, I'm done for today...

I'll leave you with some cuteness...Frida the adorable (and growing like a weed) puppy dog:

Had to trick her with treats next to the camera so as to get her to stay still...

...the paw on the leg is the last ditch effort at patience...half a second after I snapped this pic, she jumped up, head-butted me and stole the treat...

Til I Shine

So late in posting tonight!  I blame overtime at work...hooray for the money, boo.hiss.hiss. for taking time away from me that I reserve for art!  Seeing how, including this post, I'm only 3 days away from posting every day in December, I wasn't going to let the lateness of the hour deter me!

Down to brass tacks then...

I found this song, "Calvary Cross" by Richard Thompson:

It happened by accident the other day while searching for a different song....but it stuck in my head and I've been listening to it a good bit.

Contrary to what it may sound like, this song is not religious...it's actually talking about creative inspiration!

The part that struck a chord with me is talking about putting the effort into learning your craft...working hard in order to improve, and I liked it so much I wanted to put the lyrics in a page:

"Scrub me til I shine in the dark."

I was thinking about how sometimes our dissatisfaction with our art (or our lives in general for that matter) is the factor that motivates us to try to change.  But it's not always the case.  We can be dissatisfied and do nothing about it...just wallow in it.

The scrubbing only happens when we start to work against the thing that we find distasteful.  If we don't push against that abrasive feeling we have about something, then we'll never get polished up and pretty, you know?

That gelly roll  pen worked surprisingly well on the kraft paper!  I see more of the white on kraft in my future!

I think one of the best ways to use the abrasion of dissatisfaction is when you let it be a motivator to try something different...to experiment with something you've never tried before.  It can be a hideous mess, or it can turn out to be something totally awesome...but either way, stepping outside the familiar in some small way seems to always lead to the discovery of something good...maybe not the first or second time, but somewhere down the line, bad will lead to bad will lead to bad will lead to good...and that's a result that makes continued effort worthwhile.

I hope that in the new year some of the things that have been abrading me for a while will finally have polished me to the point of shining.

Tempting and Choosing

I don't know if it counts as being an overachiever for JOURNAL 52 since I actually do this quite a lot without it being a prompt, but I ended up with another spread that was inspired by a song this week.

I was listening to this song, "Harlem River Blues" by Justin Townes Earle:

And I fell hard in love and had to make a page.  (Also, if you have the time, check out THIS version, which is a much more stripped down, live version...you can hear a really interesting difference in the way the song feels!)

There's a Tom Waits quote where he says something to the effect of "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." and I guess I must agree with Tom, because I just love this song!  Actually the whole album is great...I've been listening to it on repeat for days.  I tend to do that when I find music I love...I can't help it...I always feel like I've found some kind of secret treasure and I just want to blast this fantastic noise out into the universe and get it into the ears of anyone who happens to be close enough to hear...I just want to share that treasure, you know?

At any rate, here's the page I made:  

"I'm no fool, mama, I know the difference between tempting and choosing my fate."
Egads, that's a brilliant set of words!

It feels like its been a long time since I did any collage type stuff!  It was an accidental collage situation...I was doing a gesso resist technique and apparently I got a little heavy handed with the water and my page started to peel really bad (you can see it a little in the middle bottom on the right page)...so there was some stealthy collage work that managed to happen, and I really like the spread.  

There will almost always be a shout of "Huzzah!" from me for happy accidents...and, usually, the especially 'Huzzah' moments end up happening for the times I am most angered by the initial accident!

 I think 'this is going to be so cool!', then the accident happens, cursing my fate and shaking my fist in anger comes next, and then I generally figure out a way to fix it and usually end up liking it better by the time I'm finished...not always, but often enough that you'd think I would less prone to fist shaking and fate cursing!

There's probably a life lesson in there about how when things don't go as planned, we shouldn't freak out, but instead, take a breath and figure out Plan B...there are, after all, very few times when things are as bad as they first seem.  That whole "Keep calm and carry on" mentality has merit to it...even though sometimes I'm much better at 'freak out and fall over'...haha...

-

On an unrelated note, I was wondering if you could help me with something.  

I've been pondering over the pictures that I share of my art stuff and questioning whether I like the close-up, cropped views (like the picture in the beginning) that have been my go-to for a long time.

I am wondering if I would be better to include the un-cropped picture instead.

I was looking at the not cropped version of today's page:

Is this better?

...and thought that it gave the full effect of the spread a little better than the close-up cropped version did...they're the same picture, but they look miles apart.

And then I wondered if the extra stuff that I propped my journal up on (not because it needed propped up, but because my studio is a hot mess and its easier to prop it up on the stuff than to find an empty space...) was distracting or weird or in poor taste or something, so I kicked the stuff out of the way (like an adult) and took this picture:

...more clean floor space than my studio has seen in a long time...

...of the journal on the floor.  I just realized that I could have fibbed and said 'table' instead of 'floor' and then you wouldn't have to know how bad I am for having piles of stuff stacked on every available surface...but you're my friends and I just can't lie to you...

Anywho...I was just wondering if you had any sort of preference between the three photos in the post today...or if you have any other alternatives (that don't include me keeping the studio clean...I mean, let's be realistic ☺), I would welcome them with open arms and much appreciation!

Brute Angel Or The Lighter Side of Joni Mitchell

Sometimes I have these strokes of creative genius...ok, maybe I'm the only one who sees it that way, but it still counts!

That's what happened to me for this week's JOURNAL 52 prompt "Sing a song in your art journal.  You can make a list of songs, illustrate a favorite song, use musical inspiration, or just free play create while listening to your favorite music!"

I almost always listen to music while I am creating art, so I wanted to do something a little different and I chose to go with illustrating one of the lyrics from a favorite song.

Here's the song I chose, "Down To You" by Joni Mitchell:

I love Joni.  Her music has been an adored part of my life for a long time.  I don't want anyone to mistake my...more comical...take on her lyrics for me being disrespectful!  That's so not the case!  

But I also didn't want to descend into the sad-sackery that's been plaguing me in recent months, and Joni's music can be so melancholy sometimes.  What I thought I would do is take her serious lyrics and put a lighthearted spin on them, to remind myself that even in sad times or frustrating situations, there is still space for joy and levity.  

Here's what I came up with:

"You're a brute.  You're an angel.  You can crawl.  You can fly too."
-Joni Mitchell

I have the suspicion that other people are either going to find this as silly and fun as I do or else be really confused...but I honestly really enjoy this page for what it is.  

Knowing the song inspiration behind it and then seeing this beefcake gal and her tiny wings flying through the air just makes me smile!  And that's what I wanted out of it, so how could I not be pleased?

I feel like I could have gone a lot of different directions with this song, and all of them be a complete opposite from the place I chose to go...and one day that might happen.

But for today, on the heels of Reverb14 and the Powerful feeling I have in my heart from it, I feel compelled by this musclebound gal!  

If all the girls I make are me, as I often feel they are, then surely I am feeling my power today and am confident that my tiny little wings can take me in any direction I choose.

Still Falling

The prompt for DOCUMENTED LIFE (DLP) this week was "Incorporate Leaves Onto Your Page In A Creative Way" and here's what I came up with:

Ta-Da!

Has October went by at a ridiculous rate of speed to anyone else?  I feel like we should be two days in, three tops, and here it is the 29th already?  What is up with that???

Fall always goes by too fast for me anyway...but this year, it's apparently jet fueled...

"How happy I am to have fall in my life."

I suppose I should just enjoy it while I can...the leaves have been very colorful so far this year, especially in comparison to the last 3 or 4 years...a bit of a muck fest they were...

But this year, they are not disappointing me!  I've been enjoying them quite a bit on my evening/after work walks with my friend Gayle.  Today's the first day we missed walking since we started last week...because grocery shopping had to be done...and it makes me sad that this weekend with end our walks because of the time change.  We can deal with pitch black at the end, but not starting off in it!  Hopefully we will be able to find an indoor place to meander about...if not, it's already been promised that we'll start back up in the spring!  

I don't want to stop walking; it's been really awesome to have something to do after work besides just going home, so I've got a bit of a pouty face happening at the moment!  I've even started to wonder how much it would cost to join a gym that's somewhere convenient to us...a scary idea, let me just say, as I've always considered myself forcefully opposed to exercise in all it's forms...now my view of myself is being called into question!  FREAKY!

"I'm in the middle and I can't stop loving you." -Nancy Wilson

I have to say, the colors on this spread are not my usual fare...I was noticing it more and more as I've been typing...I can't decide if I like it or if they look mucky...perhaps they are that grunge thing that I've seen other people do... Grunge sounds much better than muck, as it has some good musical connotations...  So I'm going with grunge...

Speaking of good music, the lyrics on the page above are from this song that I stumbled on this morning before work:

Just adorable, right?  I think I must have the weirdest taste in music ever...because I like so many things and they're all at such opposite ends of the spectrum.  I know so many people who claim to 'love everything' and then follow it up with "except this, this and that..." and they're naming off entire genres of music...  I always want to say, "Oh, so you don't like everything then?"  But it would probably be rude and so I can't say it...  There are songs I don't like and certain singers I'm not a fan of, but I can't categorically wipe out an entire music genre!  That would be pure insanity!

At any rate, I'm happy to have crossed paths with Miss Nancy this morning, who could possibly have been related to me, because my maiden name was Wilson...and I don't know a lot of my relatives, so there's a possibility in there somewhere, right?  

Well, now I'm off to bask in the glory of this cool fall evening and possibly throttle some kittens who have decided that my studio is exclusively their playground and who keep jumping on my desk and typing all sorts of crazy things into the computer...I swear, one distracts me while the other one tries to type his own blog post!  I see a squirt bottle in these kittens future if they don't stay off my desk!

Where My Feet Go

I'm making up for my slacktitude since vacation with this second post (that ended up pretty long!) in short succession.  Woo Hoo!

I've also got a few more vacation photos at the end of this post (though not all of them, because...lazy photo editor...), so yay for that too!

This week's Documented Life (DLP) prompt was "Polka Dots" and here's what I came up with:

How can there be so much white space and it still be so busy!?!

As you might be able to tell, I had gone a completely different direction for my first attempt at this spread...but I REALLY hated it, so I gessoed over it...one thin coat...clearly too thin...and tried again.  Even though you can see the first try through the gesso...which I didn't really pay attention to until it was too late... I like it much better now.  Mostly because of the quote:

"Your feet will take you where your heart is." -Irish Proverb
I'm giving myself high fives over my slow but steady lettering improvement...VERY slow, but when I actually take my time I can see it getting a better...in 20 or 30 years, I may be an expert letterer!

That quote makes me feel better about the busy background.  When I look at this page, it makes me think that, despite all the noise and chaos and distractions around us, there's some small piece of ourselves that keeps pushing us towards what we want without us even realizing it!  I feel so woowoo/new age/hippie weirdo saying that, but hey, even I can be blindly optimistic from time to time!  (I think the beach vacation helped...) :)

For Journal 52 (J52) this week, the prompt was "Experiment", which has to be my favorite prompt so far!  I like to think of everything I do as an experiment...because if I mess up I can just giggle and say 'Oh well...it was just an experiment...' and then experiment some more!  Experiment and Play have to be in my top art journal words...right next to Try!  Because it's all fun and doesn't have to be serious...or, in my opinion, should NEVER be serious!  (But then again, I don't think there's a whole lot out there in the world that I actually do take seriously...haha...no really...)

At any rate, because I liked this prompt so much, I have two pages ready to show you (and possibly a couple more that I'm still working on).  First page:

"I found the colors and shapes of a perfect autumn."

For this page, I started out with blank watercolor paper and used gel medium through a stencil.  Then after it dried...or more correctly after I thought it dried...I sprayed it with Dylusions ( Lemon Zest, Pure Sunshine, and Squeezed Orange).  You can tell the that some of the gel medium was still wet, because it sucked up some of the Dylusions.  In the areas that are still white, that gel medium had already dried and I could just wipe the Dylusions away.  After that layer of Dylusions dried, I doodled in some of the spaces with a white China Marker and then sprayed those doodles with Dylusions (After Midnight, Cut Grass, and Postbox Red).  The page made me think of patterns found in plants and the colors made me think of the fall, so I wrote my little journaling on a piece of gold painted book page that I had left over from another piece and used gel medium to glue it down.  You can see that the gel medium reactivated the Dylusions and made swipe marks around my triangle...which reminded me of the tiny ripples that might happen when a leaf drops into water...another lovely autumn image!

And then there's this page:

"That was just a dream some of us had." -Joni Mitchell

I got the lyrics on the page from "California" by Joni Mitchell (who, for the record, has a lot of theft-worthy lyrics...I just love her!):

I REALLY like how this page turned out, and it was all because of experimenting.  You see, I've had this tube of gloss gel medium for a LONG time, and I really don't use it...because it's so shiny...ugh.  So I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen if I stuck down some stuff (like tissue paper, napkins, oil pastels, stamping, random papers, etc) in between thick layers of gloss gel medium?  And so that's what I did...I'd stick down napkin bits, then a thick layer of the gloss medium, wait for it to dry (which basically takes overnight, by the way...as in FOREVER to an impatient sort such as myself!), add some papers and stamping, another thick layer of gloss gel medium, and so on.  I think there are either three or four layers of gloss gel...  Then I used cheapie acrylic paints and made this girl, inspired yet again by Mindy Lacefield's art (I can't get her style out of my head!), and wrote Joni Mitchell's lyrics and called it done!  

I don't know how well you can see it, but this page looks VERY different with the thick layers of gloss medium in between as opposed to if I had just glued everything down thinly and painted over that.  In person, you can see how each layer kind of pops forward from the one beneath it!  Now, even though I called it done, I'm pondering whether I should add one more thick layer of gel medium over top of the girl and journaling?  But...I kind of like how the girl and the lyrics are matte compared to the high gloss of everything else...  It makes me want to make a second page like this one, and experiment with adding the final thick layer of gloss vs. not adding it...  Which means I'll have to go buy more gloss gel medium...even though the point was to get rid of what I had because I don't use it.  Now I think I might be warming up to it...  Oh, the perils of being an art journaler!!!

And finally, here are some more vacation photos (although not all of them...):

This is an outdoor corridor at Atalaya.  You can read a little bit about Atalaya itself and see more pictures HERE.  And if you go HERE and scroll down, you can watch a short video about Atalaya.

A big fantastic part of our trip was going to an art show held at Atalaya...I didn't get too may pictures from the show, because it's frowned upon by some artists, but I did get to take a picture of our favorite pieces that I'll share with you in another post...seriously, stay tuned for that, because the artwork is AWESOME!

This bird is, I believe, called an Anhinga.  You can find out why it's sitting like this if you read the "Behavior" section of THIS article!

Please take note of the sign in the picture above...and then take note of this:

I'm an alligator.

You can read a little bit of history about Huntington Beach State Park, which is where the Anhinga and alligator pictures were taken, HERE.  

All the rest of these pictures were taken at Brookgreen Gardens, which you can read about and see more of on their WEBSITE.

I love this picture...the sculpture, I believe entitled "Diana", was one of my favorites!

Brookgreen Gardens is SO cool, and there's so much to see, especially if you enjoy art or flowers/plants...I wish we would have had more time...and that I had worn a more comfy pair of shoes!

Sign describing the really old tree you're about to see in the next picture...

Me in front of the Live Oak tree that was mentioned in the sign above.  Now, I'm a big kind of gal, but look how huge that tree trunk is!  I think it's cool to know this tree was around when the Declaration of Independence was signed!  It reminds me of the Greek proverb "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." 

This is my mom with another Live Oak in the background...the Live Oaks in this section of the garden are all over 250 years old...  Mom said this particular Live Oak reminded her of a 'byser', which is what my 2 year old nephew, Remy, calls spiders...Can you tell that Mugga (what Remy calls my mom) and the little man spend a lot of time together?  I think we both wanted to see his reaction to Brookgreen Gardens...he has an appreciation for nature well beyond age!

And lastly, but definitely not leastly, here is one of the SEVERAL pictures I took of my favorite statue at Brookgreen, Don Quixote:

I wish you could have been there to see him with me!

I think it's really interesting how I've branched out internally since taking up art journaling.  Whereas before, I could look at artwork and tell you I liked it or didn't like it, I now look at these works in a different, deeper way!  The statue of Diana above makes me feel energized and alert...there's something about it that makes my blood move a little faster.  The statue of Don Quixote on the other hand, has a slower, more determined air to it.  It seems to me, that he and his horse, Rocinante, plod on towards their goal.  Despite the more melancholy nature of this statue, it seems hopeful, as though they are not giving up...It makes me root for them to make it.  

Sorry, that was just a little brain fart that came to me as I was looking over the pictures...

Did I mention I was NOT ready to come home...I could have spent a whole week just at Brookgreen Gardens itself with no problem...

I'll share more vacation photos with you next post, but for now, I'm off to try and get a little bit of paint on my fingers before bedtime!

High and Low

The prompt for Journal 52 this week was to use a photograph in your art in some way.  You can read more about that HERE. 

I love what other people can do using pictures and seamlessly blending them into their art.  Major gorgeousness!  I, however, am not very practiced at doing this.  So, because I don't actually have a huge amount of photos, and because I was scared that I would ruin one of the few photos that I do have, I used a photo from an Ikea magazine.  I think this is actually a really good way to practice putting photographs in your art, without the fear of ruining said photo.  I am going to keep practicing with magazine pictures till I get better, and then I will start incorporating actual photos.

So here's what I did:

I looked high and low.

First off, not to shabby for one of my first attempts, right?  I started off with a page that had spray inks already on it, I think from a failed experiment with stencils...basically, the page was a scrap piece of watercolor paper when I started out.  It was horrible looking.  

So I was going to just cover it over with some gesso and start fresh...but when I did that, the ink smeared around (duh, water-soluble spray inks!  I knew that...) and I really liked what accidentally I absolutely knew was going to happen...  

When it was dry, I glued down my magazine photo, and covered it with a thin layer of Glossy Accents so that I easily wipe away anything that accidentally got where it shouldn't get.  It ended up making the picture have those neat ripples in it, which I think makes it look like an older photo.  I imagine if I had done this with a black and white magazine photo, it would totally look like a weather beaten vintage pic!  Again, hooray for happy accidents absolutely knowing what was going to happen from the moment I started...  

Then I used gesso mixed with Dylusions to try and make the image look like it was part of the page instead of sitting on top.  I think this could be done a little more effectively, and I will try more/different things to blend it in next time. 

 Then I added the big lettering at the bottom, and when everything was dry, I took a white pen and did all that scribbley, messy journaling around the photo.  Yes, there are words.  Yes, that is my actual handwriting.  Yes, I can read it.  I know!  I keep telling you I have 12 year old boy handwriting!  To get to the point where I was sure no one else could read it, I wrote down the page first, then turned it horizontally and wrote over that, then turned it diagonally and wrote more and then diagonally the other direction and wrote even more.  That's a good way to get things out of your head, while ensuring no one else will be able to read what you wrote.

I used this song as part of the inspiration for my page:

I think it describes my feelings pretty well in regards to the loss of my friend.  I don't walk around in a cloud of despair everyday like I used to.  I'm learning how to live with what happened, and be happy with the world as it is.  I don't look for him anymore.  I have stopped trying to find pieces of him in the people I meet.  It was driving me crazy to live like that.  And I'm better now that I have come to realize that, even though he's gone and even though no one else in the world will be exactly what he was, I am lucky to have had him in my life and I should take that for what it is and be happy for it.  And most days are happy days.  But the anniversary of his death was Saturday, and I have come to understand that it seems no matter where I am or what I am doing, May 10th will always be tinted with sadness for me.  I imagine that too will get easier with time, but I can't imagine never feeling at least a little sad.   And that's ok.  I don't think anyone gets through life with a pristine heart.  They're all all a little scarred or a little broken.

To paraphrase Rumi, the cracks are where the light shines through.  We take what we have learned from those we love, and we share it with others, consciously or unconsciously.  We empathize with the pain of other people, even if the reason for their pain is not the same as ours.  We just know it hurts, and we can feel that hurt in our own hearts.  Maybe we help them get through it in some small way.  And maybe we learn to love our scars and our broken hearts, not because we wish for them, but because of what they mean...because of who they've made us...because we're lucky to have them...  Because even though they're banged up, they're still beating.

Things of Beauty and Intrigue

I've got a quick page to show you today...

She reminds me of Forest Whitaker...hehehe...  Despite her ptosis (aka lazy eye), I like her quite a lot...especially that head-wrap thing she's got going on...I was inspired by the scrapbook paper (glued at top) for the color scheme, and I'm really happy with how that came together as well.

The lyrics on the page are from "Ugly" by Cold (I love these guys so much...):

I've been on a roll with cleaning and doing laundry and mundane household things since early this morning...I was taking care of business...with speed and agility.  Usually I use my speed and agility to run away from housework, but today I was a responsible adult and did the boring stuff.  Now I'm off to eat midnight Taco Bell as a reward for all my hard work today...

Repetition

There's so much repetition happening in my life right now.  Some good, some...less than good.  I am a repeat offender in regards to art, good music, obscene levels of milk drinking, being generally hilarious...purposefully or not, and collecting weird stuff that I don't really have room for but that's too cool to pass up.  That's all generally good stuff.  But I'm also a repeat offender for stinky stuff...cigarettes, junk food, staying up too late at night when I have to get up the next day (ending in the zombification of me during daylight hours) and of caring too much about people who will never care about me.

I've talked about that last one before...like I said, I am a repeat offender and I know it.  I haven't been able to help it so far...once you get into a habit, it's easy to stay in it.  Maybe it's something everybody does at some point...loving someone who will never love you in return.  You know their feelings will never change, but it's like an addiction...you feel powerless to resist the pull they have on you, despite the fact that the entire thing is one-sided...even when you finally see that it's one-sided, you still try to make them love you.  Relationships shouldn't work that way.  Real relationships don't work that way.  

Unfortunately for me, I am an expert at finding these one-sided love situations.  I've always been that way.  I find the person who will take and take and take because I'm willing to give.  I don't think that it's a bad thing to be willing to give, or to take a leap and hope that this time will be different from all the other times you've been let down.  Hope can be a terrible and dangerous thing sometimes.  But I want to love and be loved in return, and the only way to do that is to put your love out there.

Since I've been art journaling, which has pushed me to get in touch with how I really feel about things in my life, I've come to see that I don't have to keep letting people steal my love.  That's not a requirement of love at all.  Love is too valuable to be wasted on people who don't appreciate it.  The feeling that my love is too valuable to be wasted is new to me.  I mean, I've understood the concept, just not as it applied to me.  Now I think I'm beginning to understand.  You, me, whoever...we're all worth so much more than our desperate need for affection.  We have to love ourselves first, before we can expect anyone else to love us.  We have to have enough self-respect not to jump into things with both feet and not try to get back to shore when we realize we're swimming in leach infested waters.

So I've got that part down...the part where I know that I need to make a break.  The next step, I'm not so sure about.  Now that I've unleashed my emotions, I have a tendency to feel very...passionately...  Passionate love is what I've got...but the downfall is that I have the opposite problem too...  And the opposite of passionate love is passionate hate...actually, that's not true.  I really think that the opposite of passionate love is apathy...in my eyes, having someone hate you is much better than having someone be indifferent toward you.  But I haven't learned how to be apathetic yet...I really don't know that I'm cruel enough to ever be apathetic toward a person...so what I have to work with is passionate hate.  That's my solution for now.  

I know, I know...that's not a solution.  But it's what I have to let (or make) myself feel for now.  It's the only way to break the cycle of too much unhealthy love.  Therefore, if I happen to see a certain person and set my jaw, roll my eyes, or comment to a friend that I hate said-person's stupid face, it's only because at one point I loved too much.  I have to replace the love I felt and the pain of rejection with the feeling of general disgust toward the person I formerly cared for.  And if I fake it often enough, eventually it will become how I really feel.  And maybe at some point in the future, I will be wise enough to let that disgust fade into not caring at all.  

And that's the thought I had in mind when I made this journal page:

"Repetition creates a habit.  Repetition breaks a habit too."  -Melissa Ferrick

Here's a live version of the song that the words on the page are from:

If somebody has a better idea of how I can skip the feelings of hate and disgust and go right to not caring, I would love to hear it...I don't want to hate people, but I don't know any other way to make myself stop caring too much.  I've thought about trying to pity the aforementioned non-returners of love...you know, because I am pretty awesome and they are missing out big time...but that's not worked out so well.  I really kind of want to hate them for now.  And that is a feeling...even if it's not a very nice one...and it is one of my goals to accept what I am feeling...  Can you tell I'm trying to justify my longing to hate?  ...really, I'd feel much better if I just got to throat punch the non-requiters...and then say, 'Now you know how I felt'...but I don't think violence is the answer...or, really, I just can't afford the lawsuits...  So, for now, until some better choice comes along, I'll be repeatedly telling myself that I am above punching people...but not above hating their stupid faces...and maybe eventually I'll break the habit of caring about people who don't care about me.