My passion has always been poetry. Words are my form of therapy and cost much less. I often work out details of my life by writing things out. So many times I have thrown these snippetts away and now wish I had not. Words can touch our hearts both in the written or spoken form. I will fill this place with poetry, and other heartfelt forms of the written word. You may find some mixed media Art here also. I see words as Art, Do you?
Not really a collage as this piece is mostly paint, crayons and markers but I was thinking of the asymmetrical composition theme as I was playing. The little yellow dots are paper.
Another piece from my Claudine Hellmuth Asymmetricl Composition class. Or is it a Low Horizon Composition? I think it would fit it both categories. This is a paintover collage of a summer sunset. 
Closeup of lips page:
I then journaled around the pages about my idea of "butterfly kisses".
kitty whiskers brushing my cheeks
babies
eyelashes
a puppies wet nose
an early morning snuggle
a glance across a room
hugs
a whisper
a forehead kiss
a wink
chocolate
Next weeks theme is mixed media. Looking back at my previous pages it seems most of them already are mixed media so I will have to think on this one. I think her challenge is to stay with one medium each day. Will I stay with one medium for one page and another for the next? Will I be able to do this? We'll see...
Who inspired you to create something and make it your own today?
Be Happy, Be Healthy, Be Yourself,
Tess
I seem to have the subject of friends and friendship still on my mind. This yellow page has morphed and has gained a friendship tree. It seems fitting as it is the page that accompanies my altered photo page of Raven and Angel. One day they may see this and hopefully understand the messages here. Have you watered your friendship tree lately? With the holidays behind us and life starting to get back to normal it is easy to forget to call that special friend, one that may be far away or just right next door. Cultivate your friendships as often as possible. Gain strength from them and know when it is time to move on. Some friendships are meant to last and some are meant to fulfill a purpose. 
I cut my face out of a picture and gave myself luscious full lips (stolen from a model in a magazine). I've always felt my lips are too thin. I love how I changed them here. I am sure I will recognize this journal years from now just by the cover. You may recognize the little party hat as one of my ATC's. I liked the reminder that each new day, new month, new year and new decade is part of a puzzle and we are all an important part of that puzzle. I hope to fill it this month with many of the thoughts written around the cover as a border. New Ideas, new dreams, new techniques, new memories, etc., etc...
Tomorrow is my family's big Christmas gathering at my mom's house. We will have about 14 people at mom's with a gift exchange, games and food. There will bw siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren and even a great grandchild. Yes, my mom is a great grandma. We called our great "granny" and now my granddaughter calls my mom "granny". I love it, and she doesn't mind at all! Fun! Fun! Hopefully the snow doesn't cause travel problems. My oldest brother is the farthest away and still only has a 1 hour drive. The streets and roads are pretty clear now since we've had sun the past few days and the roads crew did a really good job cleaning up the Christmas snow storm.
I've done step 1, paint; step 2 collage and I've started step 3, penwork. Except I admit not all pages are collaged yet and some have no shading yet. I was so anxious to try every step so I got several pages done with each step and then moved to the next. I am thinking I may journal with white or silver on the cover since I think it's too dark. That will lighten it up a bit. I love how my bird girl has turned out. She is somewhat of a curiosity, or maybe she is a curious type. Oh and her hair is from a cat. I loved that idea. She scalped a cat (Oh my I hope my cat babies don't read this.). Can you tell she loves the great outdoors?
I tried taking a pic of the journal with my new camera but it didn't work out too good so I used my scanner instead for the rest.
I'm not sure what her story is yet. I know she needs altered a lot more as she's too obvious. I will add more altering to her and the rollerskating princess after lunch. I'm off to visit Billie today and buy more tape. The Prismatic markers seem to be working fine but no white. I'm going to get white also. 
I sketched this in the middle of the night this past week. I decided to bring her to life (so to speak). She is becoming a collaged painting on wood. I've been gluing and painting like mad. I've searched through magazines and cut out hands and feet. I've changed up this and that from the original sketch. I wasn't happy with the background I had started with and redid the top portion after having already glued some buttons down. Using mod podge to glue a button to wood is an excellent idea, but only if you don't want it to come off. Compromise. A new idea forms. My every free moment is being consumed by this piece. I took today off from my day job to work on her. Why?! I have no idea...but it feels good to see her take on color and shape. I have learned many lessons and grabbed the wrong bottle a couple times. And I've found my fingers often work much better than a paint brush. I am having so much fun with "Abby's Lesson". I have no idea what I will do iwth her. Any suggestions?
I didn't know what to do with it so I sat it aside and started a collage. I was thinking of green tea 4 two in a big green field sitting on a blanket. I am not completely happy with the outcome but it is what I had planned. Clouds are harder than I thought, at least for me anyway. I wanted to use some of the tea bag wrappers to make more clouds and I used some of the green fiber paper. I covered some of it over with tissue paper as it was awful. Lessons learned, I have Misty to thank for that. Her challenge and me attempting that challenge. 
I wanted to make a few ATC's also and came up with these:
I hope you've enjoyed my bit of green. Tomorrow's color for the challenge is white. Today I've been thinking white on white, snow white. Hmm! I really have no idea how I'm going to attempt this one. It will be interesting to see what others come up with. It's very cold here in the land of Oz. We have a cold front coming in. I am grateful though as it isn't nearly as cold as it is in Minnesota. Brrrrr! 
I really like this fiber paper scrap I found, which I found yesterday I have a whole pack of. I like the swirls on this scrapbook paper too. I need to work on lining things up better I think. And I want to get back to the junk mail ATC's as I had originally started out with. Oh and I found a small box of different stamps too and a dried up ink pad. I should have bought the art dresser a lot sooner as I'm finding all kinds of neat stuff, some I don't even remember buying. (That's not good, impulsive shopper!!) ~~~~
I'll add to this page as I think of things. I imagine I really will have fun with these as they are like mini breaks or mini vacations for me. I have to keep my hands (and mind) busy, I know I should probably see a shrink about this but crafting is a wee bit cheaper. I have always been the creative type, doodling, sewing, crocheting, doing something. My husband says I don't relax enough. What he is finally understanding is that this is relaxing to me. I found a box of 52 ATC blanks in a paper bag in my back room. Neat huh! My intention was to make them a long time ago when I first started reading about ATC's in Somerset Studio, or was it Cloth Paper Scissors, I forget. Anyway I thought they were neat and wanted to make some so I bought these ATC card blanks and little plastic sleeves to put them in and a stamp for on the back of them. Then I forgot about or misplaced the supplies, a little of both I think. So now with the junk mail idea and my scrapbook paper sheets that I've been using up and the stamps and stickers and whatever else I manage to find or think of I should be able to make ATC's for a long time. (And hopefully get enough done to get up the courage to join an online ATC swap sometime.) ~~~~~
On another subject I loved Misty Mawn's collage self portrait. I admit to feeling intimidated by the idea of a self portrait. I can't draw worth a darn and definitely can't paint portraits. I thought about grabbing the camera but...., well I never did. Then I seen her collage portrait and thought, "WOW, i can do that". So I grabbed my journal and I did it as my creative outlet today and here it is. (It's by no means as good as Misty's or many of the other participants in Misty's January fun but I was pleased with my results.)
I didn't quite follow Misty's instructions but pretty close. I need to purchase or find a gardening book as I need more floral pictures in my magazine stash. And I need more inspirational words too. That will be another thing to do one day when I'm bored or not feeling well and need something to do with my hands. I can usually find free magazines with interesting pages to tear out at the local library. Most of the elements here I already had torn out of old magazines. I have a large manila envelope I keep them in. I once sat cutting eyes out of magazines for like a week every evening. Drove my husband nuts. I had a mission though, I was creating some artwork to go along with a poem I wrote, Beauty of a Woman. Maybe I'll cut it up and make it into ATC's?
