Soul Journaling Under Wraps

Today's exercise was to follow the prompt "I forgot to tell you..." and then continue the thought process from there. As you can tell from my first picture here, I had a lot to say! This photo is small and a little blurry to protect the privacy of my personal thoughts (not that there's anything here that I wouldn't tell to a friend one-on-one).
Next, I covered it all up with different kinds of tape. This was a challenge for me because I didn't have much variety in the house.
Lastly, I used acrylic paint (denim blue and then burnt umber) over the tape to give it an aged and distressed look. The red/blue striped tape was a shiny cellophane so it resisted the paint... I kind of like it though.
I'm not sure if this is finished or not. I think it makes a better background than a complete piece of art. Maybe we'll be adding more over it later... or, if not, I can always do my own thing!

Soul Journal Inchies

Continuing on with Sarah Whitmire's Soul Journaling prompts... Going back to yesterday's page, I trimmed out my soul armor with a gold foiling pen - it's a lot of bling, but I'm worth it =)

The next exercise was to search magazines for specific images... some were generic items, like "a bird" or "a flower" whereas others were more personal, such as "eyes the same color as yours" or "something you want (which is NOT the picture of money - LOL)"
Actually, one of the prompts was "something comfortable" which I couldn't really find any picture for... so I picked the money as "something I need to be comfortable" because, well, don't we all?

First, I made a wash of some dark purple acrylic paint (which turned out pretty light once I watered it down), then I spread it around and blotted with paper towels. When that was dry, I pasted on the inchies and applied another wash of a lighter colored paint (ochre). Lastly, Sarah had us add some words and draw around some of the inchies.

A few personal things here? Well, the "40 September" was my last birthday, the beautiful mountain scene is from right here in Colorado where I live now, the snowy branches are my "something you have" since I really appreciate having winter seasons again after living in California for twenty years. The banana bread is one of my favorites and reminds me of my grandmother; the hand represents my current round robin journal which is still winging it's way around the world; the aspen leaves are another Colorado specialty; and the purple swirl represents my favorite color (hence the purple background, too!)

Soul Journaling

One of my new year resolutions was to start a personal art journal this year. The problem was that I didn't have any idea where to start. One of my dear art friends told me about Sarah Whitmire's Soul Journaling prompts and so I have decided to jump right in! I know I won't be able to follow along daily but will try to work on this project as regularly as I can.

The first two spread are my take on Sarah's first prompt - to cover my pages with text, then pick out words that describe how I am feeling, circle them, and write down some of my thoughts:

The next step was to get out the gesso and cover up all of my words, taking time to contemplate on them as I painted them out. Secondly, I needed to "claim" my book by putting my name all over the first page...
Finally, I needed to create my "soul armor" and decorate it using words that describe how I can protect my creative spirit. Those of you who know me know I love asian things so I just had to use this samurai on my page... I decorated the background with a piece of gold-printed joss paper and some kanji rub-ons. I will probably go back and add more detail to my armor but this is what I've gotten done so far.