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!

Tabs

I've had one of these weeks...the yuck kind of week.  One of the kittens passed away very unexpectedly and without warning.  Apparently, it's not uncommon for that to happen between 3 and 6 weeks for kittens, generally from birth defects, often related to their hearts.  But it's still very sad and makes me worry about the other kitten, who we've officially renamed Mortimer, because he just couldn't be "Fat Tony" without his brother Pauly, so now he's Mortimer and it suits him much better.

In addition to that sadness, I said goodbye to yet another tooth yesterday, in an emergency yanking.  For the record, if at all possible, try to avoid the emergency yankings, because they cost about 3.5 times as much as a yanking at your regular dentist.  On the opposite side, it was the most pain-free yanking I have ever had, so it was almost worth the extra money, because that sucker just popped right out and I looked at the dentist as he walked away and said "Was that it!?!"  It was a glorious moment for dentistry, let me tell you.  Also on the positive side, I'm running out of teeth to yank, and since they don't grow back, I'll very soon not have to deal with the tooth pain ever again!  And I can get dentures and be able to actually chew things again.  The prospect of chewing things is very exciting for me...

Also on the sad side of things: my walks had to be suspended due to stupid Daylight Savings time.  I am kind of in a funk about that.  But my friend Gayle and I have decided to have dinner once every two weeks until we can get back out on the trail.  And that's a good thing!

Also, weird emotional stuff keeps popping up for me this week and last.  I'm trying to avoid going down to blue funk town, but the waa-waa's have been kind of pervasive.  And you can see it in my JOURNAL 52 page for the "Stencil" prompt:

"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love." -Warson Shire

I really like this page, despite the line backer body I seem to have given her.  Let's call it a metaphor for how we hold so much inside of us and not the fact that I wasn't paying attention to the scale of things when I drew the shoulder area...because it makes me sound so much more artistic the first way...

For DOCUMENTED LIFE this week, the prompt was to "Add a Tab" and this is what I came up with:

I used acrylic paint, scrapbook paper, modeling past with gelato added to color, dylusions, image transfers, and metallic foil embossing/rub-ons.

This is not one of my usual color combos...it's so...girly!  I think the only thing that saved it for me was the black Dylusions...  Once I added that, I really liked how it looked!

Here it is with the tags removed from the pockets.

I was really enjoying the foil embossing...can you tell?

"I got my own back." -Maya Angelou
"I was never one of those girls..."

One side of the tags ended up matching the page pretty exactly...the other side is brighter and bolder for sure:

"Look for the answer inside your question." -Rumi
"Very few of us are what we seem." -Agatha Christie

I think the girl with the Rumi quote is my favorite one...I really like the frame around her head.  Also, in happy accident territory, this is what happens when you are impatient and you don't let your gel medium dry completely during an image transfer...shame on me, but I also think it looks really cool!

I really like the "Tab" prompt, because it led me to do the pull-out tags.  I like that there's an interactive part to the page, most of my pages are not like that.  I think I am going to make it a goal to make my journals more interactive in the future.

Speaking of the future, are you as excited as I am for the new sessions of J52 and DLP?  The fact that I've stuck with two year-long projects is really motivating me to try to do even more, so I've also got some other plotting going on in my mind for projects next year...nothing concrete just yet, but the plotting is abounding! 

Have you heard of any other year-long weekly or monthly challenges in the works?  I'd love to have another thing to include in my plotting...