A Documented Life - Let Me Repeat Myself

I find myself looking forward to Saturdays, when the creative minds behind The Documented Life Project post the prompt for the week. Week 7's suggestion: select a shape and repeat it throughout the page. My immediate thought was to do circles because I love circles, I'm always doing circles, and I have about a million circle stamps and stencils. Hmmm, where's the challenge there? Then I thought about silhouettes, for largely the same reason. Lots of silhouette stamps and stencils in my stash. So, naturally, I ultimately decided on triangles, not a shape I often use, and guess what? Barely a stamp, stencil, or other embellishment in that shape anywhere in my vast collections.

I went to the bag that holds all my gelli plate prints and started cutting triangles. I then used matte medium to adhere them to a page I had previously painted with a wash of turquoise. The triangles were overlapped, and in the spaces where there were none, I drew some in with pens. I created some triangular stencils by masking half of diamond shaped stencils with painter's tape, and stenciled some areas with black paint. I also outlined some of the triangles with black fluid acrylic.

I added some triangles of fabric, decorative napkins, and textured grungeboard. Then some doodling with glaze and souffle pens, and finally, a trip to the sewing machine.

Some of the triangles are lifted up with dimensional adhesive dots. That, along with the stitching, adds some texture and interest without adding a lot of bulk to a journal that is already getting very very big.

While I had the machine opened, I worked on a little top secret project. I'm "auditioning" ideas for an upcoming swap, so I did a little hand-felted heart, which is embellished with some fibers, held in place with machine stitching. 

BTW, the heart is actually about half the size of the photo. Don't know if I'll wind up using this technique in the swap, but I do like the way it looks. 

Better Late Than Never

Over two years ago, we (and by we I mean my collaborative art journal peeps and moi) started a new round robin with an asian theme. I thought I was finished with that ages ago, and in fact, have had my own book back for over a year now. Turns out, due to a glitch in the mailing process, Marita's book skipped me, and it was only recently that I was able to do some pages and mail them to Marita so she could finally have a completed book. I used a stencil technique I learned from the wonderful Lynne Perrella. When you find an image you love, you make a bunch of photocopies of it, and then using a craft knife, cut away only parts on each copy. You also carefully cut out the entire image on one, so you have a silhouette as well. That way you can create (or maybe I should say recreate) the image, but using your own colors, textures, designs, etc.

The two facing pages:

Close-ups:

Most of the color comes from acrylic paint (some are metallic), though there is some embellishment with markers, paint pens, and glaze pens. Lots of stencils were used. You can see how using Lynne's technique allowed me to decorate each part of the image differently. Surely not authentic, but I love how it came out. I have been zendoodling almost daily, so couldn't resist doing some of that on the quote. 

Since I was working on loose pages, and not in the book, I used that opportunity to add some texture with some machine stitching. I don't know how much of that is apparent in the photos, but it's there.

So happy to have finally done this and gotten the pages into the mail. I really do hate being so late with something, even if it wasn't my fault.

ZenDoodling A Documented Life

This week's prompt in The Documented Life Project was to create a border of doodles. You could say I got carried away, as I didn't stop at the border. I've been following Beckah Krahula's "One Zentangle A Day" since the fall. By following, I mean attempting to practice a new zentangle daily. So, I've skipped a few days and then did more than one on some days, and I'm about a third through the book. I am by no means a zentangle purist, but I do like the feeling I get when I'm lost in the process. No kidding, it really is a very calming activity. Since my prompt page contains some "official" tangles as well as my own marks, I'm calling it ZenDoodling.

The fish is a stamp I carved ages ago in a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer class. It's just a plain outline of a fish, so lots of empty space to doodle in. For the coloring, I used a variety of pens and markers and some watercolors as well. After last week's prompt (secret messages), which was very emotional for me, this week was just fun. And fun is good.

Speaking of good, and this has nothing to do with the project, I just wanted to share a VERY good tip I received from my good friend Pat. I think she shared this months ago, but I just had a reason to try it out, and it works. Do you have any paintbrushes you forgot to wash and are now totally stiff and unusable? Of course you do. Want to get them nice and soft again? Of course you do. Just soak them overnight in hair conditioner. It doesn't have to be an expensive brand. In fact, this is a good time to use up those little bottles of the stuff that you save every time you stay in a hotel. And this works even if the brush is full of dried up glue.