In reflecting on this week's Wanderlust class I realized I've never really made art just for me ... just for the experience of making art.
This week's Ephemera Theme from Renee Mueller was a theme of IDEAS ... getting your ideas out of your head and onto the Art Journal. When I came downstairs this morning to start working on my Art Journal page, some work-themed magazines were sitting next to it. Seeing them sitting together made me realize that my head is full of both work and art ideas, so I decided to see if I could use the work magazines as a source of my Ephemera for today's Art Journal Pages.
We started by painting our pages with a mix of Acrylic Paint and Gesso to achieve a matte finish to the page. I have never painted so much paper in my life as I have in this class.
Next I went through the magazines and just cut out anything about the company where I work, my job, or other things I found visually pleasing like words and quotes.
I started stacking them and thinking about how I would position them on the page like Renee did in the lesson, and then used matte medium to attach them to the painted page.
Next I created a smaller cluster of some of the same pages on the right page incorporating some vintage sheet music & some of my gel press prints onto both pages to merge the work and art elements - Crash Combining as my friend Becca called it. This is the first week I really loved covering-up what I had glued down - I covered all direct references to my company because I didn't want them to show, but I still know they are there.
Next in the lesson, she sewed some fabric to place on top of the papers. In my continued theme of combining work & art, I chose some vintage fabric trims that were gifted to me by a co-worker from her mother's sewing room. I layered them and stitched them together with navy thread. I also intertwined a piece of gold metallic thread.
I had intended to let the quote at the top be visible, but I loved how it look partially covered by the fabric.
I sewed two more scraps together for the other page. I love that I was able to find words and phrases in the magazine that can apply to both my job ... and my art.
And of course, I couldn't finish my page without adding some rubber stamping in Green & Blue StazOn Ink. I used a Wonder Woman Stamp multiple times (can you find it). I also used Unity Stamp Company Dots for Sure & a flower from the Unity Stamp Company January 2014 Kit of the Month - Be Your OWN kind of Beautiful.
I finished with a few hidden words from Cathy Zielske's Simon Says Stamp Salty Ladies No. 1 ... again, so I know they are there.
Overall, the page makes me very happy (you can click the picture to see it larger). My papers aren't as stacked as hers were in the class, but there are several layers of designs and I did leave white space.
When I signed-up for Wanderlust I knew it was going to be a real stretch for me ... but now I look forward to my mixed media creating every week.
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