Creating With Wendy

Every time I picked up Roz's journal looking for some kind of inspiration, I kept thinking of my father and our "tattered and torn apart' family. Si I went with that thought and used a family saying as the focal point of the layout. I put modelling paste, mixed with gold acrylic down and wanted to build up the layers on the page. My grandson had ripped the back page out of an old dictionary (made nanny a little angry) but I decided to use the ripped page on the page. Then to add another layer, I photocopied some of my fathers handwritten letters he had sent me about 20 years ago. Scrunched them up, ran the vintage ink over it with a teal coloured acrylic, trying to get an aged look about it. I found some cotton netting gauze material and ran the vintage ink over it to get rid of the white starkness. I added a calico border to the page with gold paint on it.  I found some vintage type photos from an old magazine, put gold paint around the edges and glued them on ...

I gave myself rather a hard time doing a page in Pam's journal, mainly because I think I had lost my mojo...pushing myself through it, in the end  I really liked how the double page turned out. I chose my favourite colour tones....yep, purple...lol. I wanted to keep the back ground relatively plain and have the focus on the swirls and then I couldn't decide what to place in the centers. I came up with purple and white tissue flowers with a button in the center. The button is attached with 2 shades of the purple cotton. There is a border of purple lace and I added some lighter purple flowers in two of the corners.  The saying on the page says, "Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out."  Full showing of completed layout. Hoping you like it Pam. Thank you.

I have finished my page in Rachel's journal. What a gorgeous little journal it was! Much smaller than I thought but never-the-less a pleasure to work in. Going along the lines of the theme of garden and imagination, the first thing I thought of was a 'flower child', so I went with it. Firstly by putting a baby in a hammock on the page itself and then by using a face image of Rachel's daughter and collaging it on a cut out of a princess image....making her a flower child. Just as we have to tend the garden to make it grow, we also need to tend to our children to have them grow strong. So combining the two gave me the inspiration of the 'Flower Child'.  a clear plastic bag attached to the page so the flower child will slip into it... Thank you!

I've had a very productive day...a little bit of gardening this morning and then spending all afternoon at my art table doing my second page in Natalie's journal. I started with the background, of course...lol...and got it to were I was happy with it. I found the focal image rummaging around in some magazines and thought it was perfect for one of those "OMG" moments. Feeling rather at ease with working in Natalie's journal,I decided to do a double layout spread with this "OMG" emotion and that's exactly what I did...I went for it and the other half contains a saying to help you move out of your comfort zone and accept things that happen in your life. I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and that reason is there to help us learn and grow as a person. I think there is a bit too much light in this pic as the wording looks confused, it is clearer in real. So the finished double page is below and now I have it ready ...

I've had a lot of fun making these gorgeous candle holders out of secondhand books . The fold pattern came from watching scrimping mommy's video on youtube. You put a battery operated tea-light candle in the top and it just finishes off the holder. Once I folded all the pages, I went over it lightly with a vintage ink and then gave it a light coat of glass gel medium. Then I decorated them by using some of the items from my craft stash. 

Today I had the pleasure of doing a page in Natalie's EMOTIONS journal. Natalie wanted us to share the emotions that made us who we are and of course, I had to pick LOVE! I would say the majority of my emotions do stem from love. I am loving life right at this moment, I love where I am and who I am and even when I get angry with someone, its because I love them...if I didn't love them I wouldn't care, so no emotion would arise. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my page of love and yep,...I had to put my 3D hearts somewhere on the page...lol Thank you!

For the past to days, I have had the pleasure to work in Jans' beautiful 'Faces' journal. I really had no ideas as to what I wanted to do, so the first thing was for me to get rid of the white page and get some background colour down. I glued down some torn text papers and then started sponging on bright coloured acrylic paints. I used a few stencils and the result you can see below... Once I was happy with the background, Ideas started flowing...even though I can't draw a face for the life of me...lol...I decided to cut a mask out of thick watercolor paper and I think this is when the idea of wearing a mask, covering our true emotions came from. I used a grey blue as a base for the face and I painted and decorated the thick piece of watercolor paper for a mask. I decided to leave the underlying face relatively plain, except for one eye with a tear drop falling from it.  So when the mask is lifted, you see one of  many emotions a persons can hide ...