Flower of the Day: Dahlia Stencil

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dahlia, Flower of the Day, flowers, stencil art, stencils

Cee does a Flower of the Day post every day. She has inspired a few pieces of art I have made including this stencil based on a photo she posted of a dahlia. She and I both love flowers and particularly dahlias. I’m so happy with this stencil – it took quite a while to cut. You will be seeing it in my journal pages and art to come.

Sanctuary Building and Turtles

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art journal, collage, gratitude, Joseph Campbell, Sanctuary, stencils, Turtle

You can see the evidence of more morning pages of journaling. I’m greatly enjoying this practice. The page on the left includes one of Kathryn Costa’s mandalas from her retreat I am participating in. I liked how the layers of writing showed through the page in some parts of the mandala. I painted other parts with acrylic paint so they would be opaque. She shared a quote from Joseph Campbell that I really liked. “Your Sacred Space is where you can find yourself again and again.”

The right hand page has a new stencil that I made today. It is a turtle and I may be using it to decorate sets for a play my husband is in with our community theater. I’m really happy with how it turned out, even if it might not be quite what they have in mind. I made a bunch of prints of it so you will be seeing it again, soon!

Have a beautiful day!

Cards and Cats

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100 Mandalas, art journal, cats, Darkness, flowers, Francis Bacon, get well cards, gratitude, gratitude journal, Light, stencils

This page layout has been a while in the making, mainly because I haven’t been up to doing a whole lot of art lately. This is a collage of my sketches for my last mandala and the cards that friends have sent since I have not been feeling well. I loved the happy flowers from one of the cards and continued a flower motif and because it is my gratitude journal I used the cat stencil I made to put cats all over.

It has a quote by Francis Bacon that isn’t super legible in the photo but it says:

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Seemed fitting for this time of year and what has been going on. I wish you peace and beauty.

Back to the Gratitude Journal

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acrylic paint, altered art, art, art journal, collage, grateful, gratitude, Journal 52, quotes, stencils

I have been writing and arting in my gratitude journal, I have not been very good about posting about it however. Posting does make me a more faithful journalist, too. These pages started as a pallet for my collage and a place to clean off stencils used in the collage. I have a lot of scraps of watercolor paper left over from the cut pages I use to make coloring pages. I am starting to practice with new art supplies in little sketches that I will then write over. It takes the pressure off of making something finished looking when exploring new supplies and is providing me with lots of interesting backgrounds for journaling. Stay tuned for more!

The Journal 52 prompt for this week is Hiding Out and I feel like that is kind of what my journal pages have been doing. Actually, my interpretation of this prompt is about hiding the private thoughts and experiences in my published journal pages. Writing over images and some of my scribble/stream of consciousness handwriting provide me with ways to write about whatever I want without thinking about the publication part of it.

Here is a page full of quotes from the book I made for Jacob and with the city stencil from my most recent collage. Do you like it when I write out the quotes?

I have so much to be grateful for. How about you?

Have a beautiful day!

Treasures and Visions

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100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, Altered book, art journal, Earth day, gratitude journal, leaves, Pema Chodrun, quotes, stencils, Treasures, trees

Sorry I have been unavailable for a while. I’m not sure if I had the flu or food poisoning, but I’m starting to feel better and I just kept adding layers to my journal pages. That worked well with the Journal 52 prompt of Treasures. My sons, husband and cats are my greatest treasures (not necessarily in that order). But in the time since my last Gratitude Journal posting we have had Earth Day and that is definitely one of my greatest treasures, too. I thought it was wonderful serendipity that the page layout for earth day was leaves and I wanted that to come through. The combination of multiple layers and the bottom layer showing through is a tricky thing, but it worked! I like the practice of writing every day and layering my writing so that none of it is really legible. This was not my most positive journaling week and I’m just fine with those words not being retained for posterity.

I have included a quote by Pema Chodrun: “Practice not causing harm to anyone – yourself or others – and every day, do what you can to be helpful.”

I don’t usually journal or blog about my worries, however, I have been having vision problems on top of my usual migraines and I did not pass my most recent Visual Field eye exam. They want me to retake it in 6 weeks, but I’m rather worried. I have been monitored for possible multiple sclerosis for a few years and this could be a bad sign. The headaches are something of an impediment to art making, but the vision problems are an even greater one. If that means they can solve some of the eye problems that would be ok. So far I can still make art and that is a good thing. I did some big paper painting this week and cut shapes out. That is where the center of the eye came from and the little flower outlines.

With being sick I fell out of my morning mandala habit, but I have continued my bedtime A, B, C, s of gratitude so I will share a bit of an overview here. I’m not sure if I described it or not but what I do is as I’m laying in bed having difficulties falling asleep I start with A and think of things for which I’m grateful for each letter of the alphabet. I rarely get to the end of the alphabet, so some of these are made up today.

A – art, Amanda, animals, avacado, aquacize

B- Bridget, Bonhommie, books, bread, bananas, batik, blogging, blogs

C – cats, Carla, creativity, colors

D – daylight, delight, Dawn, drawing

E – Earth, Elementary, Enola

F – Friends, food, fun, facebook

G – grass, gesso, gel pens, Garfunkle and Oats, Gage, ginger ale

H – Hannah, happiness, hair, home, Hexi

I – inspiration, ink, ideas

J – Jessalyn, Janine, Jacqueline, Joanie, jellybeans, joy, Jill

K – kindness, Katmandu

L – light, love, laughter

M- Mike, Marq, Mom, money, meditation, medicine, mandalas, music

N – Night, Nicky, Nora Jones

O – open heart, oatmeal

P – paper, people, pets, purple, painting, Paul, plumbing, Pat, photography

Q – quiet

R – rooms, restaurants

S – Shannon, Sarah, silliness, synchronicity

T – truth, tv, teeth

U – underpants

V – vaccines, vegetarians, vegetables

W – Watercolors, words, writing, Winzton, WordPress

X = eXcitement

Y – YMCA, youths, yoga

Z – zebras, zippers

These are not in any particular order and the list goes on, but these are the ones I can bring to mind right now. So much to be grateful for. And isn’t it strange what you think of in the middle of the night?

What do you do when you can’t fall asleep?

Forgiveness, Flowers, and Fire, Oh My

Tags

art journal, camping, collage, flowers, forgiveness, gratitude, meditation, stencils

This is the text of a forgiveness meditation by Jack Kornfield and it is so excellent. One of the things I’m working on to reduce my migraine intensity is how I relate to anger and difficult emotions. Metta meditation has been helpful, but this really is excellent. Jack addresses the need to forgive the pain and suffering I have caused others and myself as well as the pain and suffering others have caused me. The text is written over a few variations of stencils that my friend Sarah loaned me as part of the book “Stencil Me In” by Marthe Le Van. The stencils in the book are fabulous. The skulls from last week are from this book as are the poppies, below.

This was a busy day. We got another organic fruit share – blueberries! Much easier to freeze than cherries. I made a couple dozen muffins for family and the camping trip. Mike and I were ushers for our community theater’s production of the Wizard of Oz. I couldn’t resist using the poppy stencil for this one! We really are fortunate to have such an active arts community here in our small town.

Mike and I have not been camping in ages so we did a trial run before our trip out East next week. There were a few things we had forgotten, but overall it was a lovely little trip. He is still the fire master! We saw an owl and some beautiful views of the Mississippi River on our morning hike. When we got home the kitties were very happy to see me and followed me around all evening. I wonder how they will do next week?

I’m playing with different sized photos in my posts. Let me know what size you prefer.

My own stencils

Tags

Altered books, art journal, butterflies, Degas, gratitude, Inktense, stencils

I made my own stencils for these pages. The one is a cutout of The Little Dancer by Degas. I love this silhouette. The butterflies are just a very simple cut out. I keep finding very fancy butterfly stamps and stencils and I do enjoy those, but I really wanted something simple. The feather stamp is a new one that I’m loving. I am so happy with the way this layout came together. So often I am increasingly grateful for my gratitude journal. It has enriched my life in so many ways, not the least of which is my growing confidence in my art skills.

This page did not come out at all how I had envisioned it. The quote was shared at the Day of Mindfulness I participated in as a followup to an MBSR program. The quote is by Albert Camus “In the depth of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.” I had this image of a silhouette of me meditating with the quote inside. Well. I added too many details to the silhouette and the pattern tissue kept sticking to my fingers and ended up all bunched. The pen that I wrote with became blurry, but it does capture the idea that I had in my mind. Part of the beauty of art journaling is that each day is a new page.

I was preparing for a collage class using transparencies and I have really enjoyed experimenting with different kinds of transparent/translucent layers. These copies of the daffodil painting for my mom’s birthday card were made on different copiers and one was on a transparency and one was on the wrong side of a transparent label. I used the actual transparent label for my mom’s card and it turned out beautifully. I will definitely use this technique again in the future.

The blue sky page was such a clear spring day outlined with crisp bare tree branches. My husband and I went for a fabulous walk and he bought me this lovely forest stamp. Another satisfying page.

Fun with layers and transparencies. Lots of scones, friends, and coffee shops this week.