The dark places

I finally put something on this background that has been sitting here for months. I blogged about how I made the background here. For a long time I thought maybe I would do something about fire, since it looks a bit like flames. My sister commented that she thought it looked like a page about fear, but I didn’t feel to write a page about all my fears. I thought I’d rather write about what helps me to navigate my fears. Not just my fears, but the dark places of anxiety and depression as well. So I found some kind looking eyes and stuck them into the blackness. The goddess with the gold dust is showing me that there is treasure to be found by going through the darkness, and the eyes are showing me that I am not alone, they are there to help. I’m not sure who “they” are, something like spirit guides, or guardian angels, or aspects of my higher self. And maybe they’re all the same. In any case they are serene, unafraid, and they give me the gifts of compassion (for others going through dark places), courage and resilience.

I have been working in my journal a lot in the last few weeks, wanting to get all the pages finished for our exhibition (and they are finished, yahoo!) so I have a backlog of pages I would like to blog about. So I intend to try to blog a bit more frequently for a while to get through them all.

We’ve booked out tickets for Europe next year, nearly 4 months, wow! I’m still looking into what kind of journal I might keep while I’m traveling, there’s so many different options!

Growing Older

A few weeks ago I had a week when a few different people commented that I looked unhappy lately. This perplexed me because actually I don’t think I’ve ever been happier really! So I figured out it’s because the corners of my mouth are succumbing to gravity, so if you catch sight of me not smiling I probably do look unhappy, or even grumpy! This is of course a rather disturbing new development in my aging process, but not one I can do much about, unless I have a facelift which I won’t.I have noticed that not everyone gets this dropping mouth thing, I guess its hereditary because it happened to my mother. I wish it wasn’t happening. Sometimes I feel a bit depressed when I unexpectedly catch sight of myself in the mirror or not smiling in photos. On the other hand, some people my age are much more wrinkled than I am, so I suppose we all have different aging processes. I’m trying not to think about it, I mean I’m healthy and happy, and glad to be alive and able to go through the aging process! I think it was Maurice Chevalier who said “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative”.

So I made a page about all this and here it is. It is a fairly simple page really. I used some stencils and stamps and the red flowers are from some old wrapping paper.

I’ve nearly completed my first art journal..I started it in September last year, so its taken me 15 months. I have been working in a couple of other journals as well, but this is my large A4 one and I’m feeling quite proud of it. We have an art journal “exhibition” on next Thursday when some of the brave souls from our art journaling class (including me) will be putting them on display. It’s a bit scarey! I’ll take some photos and let you know how it all goes. I’ll be smiling in the photos.