Follow your Bliss

Happy Friday Morning everyone.

Around the internet arting/crafting world you may see people talking about their one little word for the year. One Little Word started (i believe) on Ali Edwards website and she offers an online course you can take… My understanding is that you pick one word that you want to be your focus for the year. I’ve not taken any of her courses, so i could be wrong, but last year i picked a word: “Emergence” which means the process of being seen or coming into ones own self.

This year, my word or focus is “Open”

To start my journal page, i found an image of a door that i really liked.

I did a bit of editing on Picmonkey.com until i got to a version of this door that i liked that felt right to me – and then printed it out on a 5×7 glossy photo page on my home computer.

Using my printed image as a guide, i chose my palette. I opened my journal to the next available spread – it was a page i had wiped my paint on from another project. I laughed when i saw Sarinda’s post this week. We both had similar colour palettes this week, as well as very textured pieces. :D Great minds!!

I used masking tape on my spread to add some texture, then i painted my pages and used a baby wipe to smooth out my brush strokes and blend the paints a little more smoothly.

Next, i found an old sheet of alphabet stickers that i haven’t used in a while. I peeled off the back of the whole sheet, then stuck the whole thing on random places – letting the stickers come off where they may.

i then covered the stickers with a coat of gel medium to keep them in place.

I got a little carried away with the gel medium, so i decided to do an image transfer of a book page. To do this, i put down a layer of gel medium, then laid down a book page over top. I then burnished my page with my thumb to make sure it was in the gel medium, proper. i waited a few minutes, then pulled the pages off, leaving a transfer. *note* I’m always too impatient, so my transfers are always very light. It’s a tricky “science” to get the right amount of time. Not enough time and not enough image transfers, but leave it too long and the paper sticks. It’s kind of a trial and error process.

I kept adding layer and layer of paint as i went a long. I used the AC Sea Fan stencil, Chris Cozen’s Bodacious Pods, and Jill K Berry’s Gera stencil with Adirondack Meadow , Glitter Paint and Adirondack Butterscotch, respectively. Then i held up the page ad sprayed the book with Adirondack Denim.

I continued adding layer after layer of paint, glitter paint, and gold paint – all with my hands. To bring out the texture of the page, i rubbed on some dark grey mica paint.

Finally, i glued the photo i printed to my page, and rubbed on a bit of paint to bring it all together. I finished it off with a quote by Joseph Campbell: “follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls” using a White Sharpie Poster Paint marker