Recent pages in my A5 journal

I seem to be using my A5 size journal as my more experimental one these days, where I try out things at my art journal class with Zom. This is the page I did last week….our prompt was simply to write about our favourite number! Not something I’d thought about much, but it only took me a few seconds to realise it was 8, I’ve always liked it, probably because its in   my birth date, 18th. It also makes me think of a crimson colour, not sure why. Anyway, no doubt  this is all fascinating to you but I really want to tell you about this page because I’m proud of it.

The process: used Zom’s idea of cutting out a stencil of the number and gessoing around it. Then painted the page with red and wiped much of it off. The paint takes to the ungessoed parts of the page very differently, so the eights really stand out. Painted a watery purple over the whole page and wiped it back. Then I used the negative part of the stencil I had cut to make some white eights. I had also painted some red and purple on a spare sheet of paper, then used a stencil and dylusions spray inks on this. I scanned the result and reduced it in size, printed it out and cut the large decorated eight from it.  Then I cut borders from the original piece of stencilled paper. Somehow it became necessary for me to be on the page “presenting” my friend,  the large eight. I would never have thought of devoting a whole page to a number, but I’m pleased with what I did here and the harmony of the colours and patterns.

Here is another recent page in my small journal. The inspiration for this page was the black and white photo of the Indian woman who seemed to be looking so meaningfully at me. This is a page about the sort of older wise woman or crone that I would like to be. For the heading I printed the words out on the laser printer and made a transfer onto clear sticky tape.The angel is from some old wrapping paper.

I seem to use a lot of angels in my art journal! I started this page in class, we had to use a credit card to apply paint in some way. I swooped some gold paint on this blue background and they reminded me of angel wings. Also it just happened that I had put this poem by Hafiz up on the fridge that week, to remind me that I probably still could have many gifts and talents that I haven’t even discovered or used yet…I love that idea! I cut the gold border to echo the triangular shapes in the backgound. The angel has one wing which comes out from the page 3 dimensionally, but you can’t really see that from this photo. Here is the entire Hafiz poem:

There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday,
There are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
“Everything I have is also yours.”
Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend
If we break into a sweet laughter
When your heart complains of being thirsty
When ages ago
Every cell in your soul
Capsized forever
Into this infinite golden sea.
Indeed,
A lover’s pain is like holding one’s breath
Too long
In the middle of a vital performance,
In the middle of one of Creation’s favorite
Songs.
Indeed, a lover’s pain is this sleeping,
This sleeping,
When God just rolled over and gave you
Such a big good-morning kiss!
There are so many gifts, my dear,
Still unopened from your birthday.
O, there are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to your life
From God.

~ Hafiz ~

Faery Gifts

I’m a SoulCollage facilitator (see www.soulcollage.com ) and have on occasions run a workshop in which I have used a guided meditation that I wrote based on the Sleeping Beauty story. In a nutshell, the participants visualise themselves as a baby and there are 12 faeries invited to their christening. Each faery comes forward with a special gift for them, for example, that they will be artistic, kind hearted, athletic etc and as they “hear” each gift they write it down (a bit tricky when you are in a light trance, but not impossible!). Just when the last faery is about to step forward the 13th faery (who was not invited) appears in a puff of smoke, and she is NOT HAPPY. So she gives the  baby an “obstacle” something that will hold them back from achieving their best purposes in life. When she disappears, cackling, the twelfth faery steps forward and says that although she cannot undo the 13th faery’s “obstacle” she can give the baby a gift which will help him/her to overcome it. The participants will afterwards go on to make some SoulCollage cards based on some of these gifts.

So this double page is based on that guided meditation. That is a photo of me as a baby, and I have written the gifts that I believe I was given at birth. The obstacle I was given is being too FEARFUL, and the ameliorating gift from the 12th faery is the gift of a “courageous heart”, because Love is always stronger than fear.

A cautionary note: Because I used pastels on this page (on the stage curtains at the top) I sprayed the page with fixative which caused some of the stamps and writing to run (at bottom of page) EVEN THOUGH they were waterproof pens. The writing at the bottom right ran so badly that I ended up printing the words out  (“For love is always stronger than fear”) and sticking them over the top. Turned out OK anyway!