Slow Journalling on Conflict

A big thank you to Tammy of Daisy Yellow for introducing me to her style of Slow Journalling.  I found that I came to a deeper understanding of what I was journalling about than if I had written in the normal way. 
The care and time that it took to make my letters fit the varying sizes of space brought me more into the present and somehow, at the same time, tuned me into my intuition more.

Have you ever tried Slow Journalling?
At first it didn't appeal to me at all but I decided to try it and really enjoyed it.  It was a good stretch for me.

Altered Page with soy wax resist

I fell in love with altered pages at the wonderful, rich, joyful and delicious blog Raven Moon Magic via her Paper Moon work.

As always, I am held back from trying new things by my need to 'get it right' on the first try.
I've been trying very hard to get past this limitation and succeeded in this case.
I tried my first altered page recently and did all sorts of things 'wrong' but it made for a great learning experience.

I kept feeling like I 'should' add something more to all of the empty space but nothing is coming to me and I really love the way it looks as is so I am leaving it alone :-)

One of the things I did 'wrong' was to not bother taping the page down evenly.  I will make sure to do that in the future.

Tips:
1.  if you will be using any wet medium on the page, use a book that has thicker pages
2.  tape it down using painters tape
3.  do not remove tape until page is entirely dry.  this will make the page less wobbly or warped from the moisture.
4.  remove page from book carefully (another thing I didn't do well :)
5.  you don't need to use a wax resist to bring out the words - I just preferred that because then I could paint at will and not worry about going carefully around the words
6.  pick words based on what you are drawn to - NOT what 'makes sense'!
7.  the words do not have to tie in with the painting in an obvious way
8.  if using watercolour paint, you can either do the painting first and pick words later - removing the paint over those words with water, or you can pick the words first and do the painting after.  You can see an example of how this will look by the moon in the upper right corner of this piece - the colour was removed after painting. 
*note* some stain will remain.

Inks With Paints

"evolve"

1.5"x6.25"

watercolour, inks

I'm loving the contrast that inks on paint can provide. 
Visit some of the links below to see some wild and wonderful work by artists incorporating inks with paints and other mediums.


I love:


- almost every single piece by Lawrence Yang 
seriously... go check this page out - there are so many and they are all so awesome! Yes, I like weird and wacky :-)

- these weird and wonderful pieces by Cherie Tan

artificial,
umbilical


- most of, but in particular, the fish pieces by Marina Korenfeld. (my fave is The Wind - sorry no direct link but it's near the bottom of the gallery thumbnails.)