The Playful Child Within

I know that I have been a little behind in my FJC, but I've wanted to do some thinking on the prompts.  One of these great conumdrums for me was asking me... when I grow up what did I want to be. At first, I started with a very colorful page and was going to display all the things I dreamed about as a child of what it would be like to be a grown up.

However, once I got started I found myself stuck.  I didn't know where else to go, so I left the page alone for the day and decided I would return later.  The following day, I was in Borders and happened across a book called Agate; it was a delightful story, but the watercolor pictures where absolutely exquiste.  So when I got home I decided to miminic a lion that I had seen in the book.  Mine turned out significantly different but I loved it none the less.

When I had finished I realized that I had just completed the prompt for the day before that had so eluded me. When I grow up, I want to still possess my inner playful child.  It was perfect in its simplicity. 

What a Beautiful Mess

As I've already mentioned that everything that happens in art journaling doesn't always turn out beautiful.  But experimenting is half the fun and to be honest even experiments that goes spectacularly wrong can be remedied and result in some cool pages.

A prime example is my first attempt at transference.  The notion of image transference seems simple enough.  This is where you take a image printed on computer paper and press it into a background page covered in either gesso or gel medium.  You rub it down and then peel the image up and ta-da the image is now on your background.

However, it doesn't always work out this easily, for I did as I described above but when I pulled the image up it was a gloppy mess of distorted color and gel medium.  Obviously, I missed something, but I was currently left with a very messy page. 

I scraped as much of it off as I could.  I then doused the page with a smattering of watercolors, but the left over muck was still noticeable, so I pasted a piece of tissue paper over the offending area, then smothered it with blue acrylic paint and gesso.  Now that most of the mess was camouflaged I decided to add something else to re-direct the viewers' focus.

What I chose to add was a purple leaf stamp.  This is a stamp that I actually created from craft foam I purchased at the local craft store.  I then painted  it purple and pressed it onto the page.  The result was surprisingly nice based on how it originally turned out. 

Sometimes mistakes make your creativity stretch much further than you ever knew it could go.