Tuesday, February 12, 2013

365 Week 7

What was I thinking?! This week I’ve been trying to decide just how crazy I really am for taking on not only a 365 challenge, but also Layout A Day (LOAD 213), and, just this past week, a giant scrapbooking garage sale. This is on top of planning and organizing all the other Crafty Neighbor events that we have planned and my other job as a travel agent. Needless to say, I’ve been a bit scattered, and my work is showing it. It was a real struggle to get some of these pages done, but I did, and I’m ready to move on to the next set. Here’s what I’ve been up to this week:

The color yellow

When I think of the color yellow, I think of bright, sun-shiny days, so I couldn’t resist painting this giant sun on my page. It gave me some practice in using the acrylic paints (something I haven’t done in years) and I also wanted to try my hand at filling a space with journaling. Not all of my pages have journaling on them, but I do feel like it is an integral process of the journal, and I want to fill it with as much journaling and symbolism as I can.

Fate

This prompt was a little difficult for me, because I wanted to examine what I really thought about fate versus chance versus free will. I didn’t initially intend for the person to have no head, but I already used the head in another entry and I never could find another one that fit. After sort of meditating on the question while I worked, I still had no concrete answer.

My parents

As the questions get more personal, I find that I have to curb my initial reaction to the prompts and try to be more artistic and symbolic in my answers. There’s a lot of symbolism in this one. The flower petals were made from a rain drops stencil. The centers of the flowers were made with punches.

My favorite holiday

Sometimes I get a prompt and I know exactly what I want to do with it. This was one of them. I used a mask to create the tree and then used a sponge to ink the entire background blue. The snowflakes were stamped in white pigment ink. After removing the mask, I decided to paint the tree and journal in it.

Daily…

I had fun matching up my gear stamps to each other on the page. I also used a stencil to sponge some additional accents onto the page. The journaling block was torn from an empty checkbook register. I tried my hand at a different font, which was also fun.

Chores

This page was a little challenging. I knew right away I wanted to use some magazine clippings to represent some of my many chores, but then when I clipped them I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I also wanted to fill the entire background with journaling, and the more clippings I had, the less journaling I could use. I wrote out my text several times, and just kept editing it until I could get it down small enough to fit on the one page. Wow! It was a lot of work!

An arm and a leg

After seeing Christen do pages where she mixed and matched faces and body parts, I thought it would be fun to do a little myself. I really didn’t have any kind of journaling or thoughts about the prompt, so I thought of changing the arms and legs on the cut outs. I used parts from at least four different pictures. I also used Tim Holtz tissue tape, stamps, ink, green paint, and green glimmer mist.

I had fun with these prompts, but I really will be glad when LOAD 213 is over. That extra project every day is wearing me out! Will we make it through next week’s prompts?