Follow Your Own Path

One of my most interesting collaborative journal groups is Artistic Evolution, in which each artist's pages must evolve in some way from the pages that came before.  What inspires the evolution is up to the artist and it can be anything; color, theme, image.  The other unique thing about this journal is that the pages step up and down in size, so bits of prior or later pages can be seen behind your own.  Makes for a fun creative challenge.

I've been working on Inge's book, and I am the next to last person to do so.  Which means I get to see all the glorious pages that came before.  Very cool. 

Inge's preferred colors are blues in the aqua/teal family, greens and purples.  The person who went before me was Elena, and her pages had some bird images and a quote: "you are right where you should be."  This is what her work inspired me to do:

 

 

Two of the birds (the second one on the left page and the one on the right page) were done by spreading fiber paste through a stencil.  The others were cut (using the same stencils as a template) from some papers left over from the Lynne Perrella/Anne Bagby workshop I did last May.  They were collages done on deli wrap paper.

 

I didn't plan this out ahead of time, but when I started attaching the birds, I realized that the one done with the fiber paste on the right page was the only one facing in that direction.  At first I thought I'd cut a few more from the collage to put on that page, also facing towards the left.  Then I had a little "aha" moment. The majority heading in one direction, but one going its own way.  So I left it as is, and that's how "follow your own path" evolved.

 

 

 

 

The background began by applying a crumbled decorative napkin (blue and green) to the chipboard substrate, then adding MANY stencil designs using regular acrylics, metallic paint, and fluid acrylics.  There is also quite a bit of splattering.

 

The decorative edge you see on the right page was cut from cardboard using Tim Holtz's Distressed Doily die.  It was colored with blue and green ink, covered with clear embossing powder and heat set.  Afterwards some french script was stamped across it with deep purple archival ink.

 

The letters are actually Heidi Swapp rub-ons, and I love the fact that they are already distressed looking, so I didn't have to mess with them too much to make them look like they aren't rub-ons.  I did ink over them a little so they aren't as starkly white as they started out.

 

Just one more person to do their thing and this beauty of a book will head back to Inge in Belgium!