Get Messy Season of Love (Week Two, Part Two)

After finishing part one, I was in the mode of printing, stamping, and cropping photos, so I continued in a similar vein for this one. This time, I kept the photos rectangular for a snapshot effect. I made them black and white to keep them from competing with each other and turned to the backgrounds for color. Super simple but I love the graphic black text over the watercolor wash. The pages in the Moleskine cahier notebook I'm using are pretty thin, but they held the watercolor well enough for my purposes. I may switch to something thicker though if I keep finding I want to paint.

For the journaling, in the spirit of the "100 people" prompt, I went for quantity and wrote about all the people I've loved at different phases in my life. (Only a small percentage of whom are pictured here.) Pretty cool that once you start thinking about people you love it takes a while to run out.  

summer minibook 2013

The Eastern US is still consumed in a polar vortex, so let's take our minds off the endless winter with a summery project, shall we? In addition to daily cards and now art journal pages, I also occasionally make minibooks. My foray into minibook-making, as with many of my other projects, was 100% inspired by Elise's amazing archive. I bought this book from her two summers ago to document my first summer of gardening and finished filling it up last February. This is my paper-crafting magnum opus and for sure one of my favorite things I've ever made.

 

Other than the Elise Joy minibook and a bunch of stamps and labels, there aren't many pre-made embellishments in this book. (I'm happy to share supplies info if anyone is interested).

Instead, I had a great time collecting stuff throughout the summer to include in the book. In addition to more pictures of my garden than anyone wants to see, it includes seed packets, plastic garden markers, my sketch of the garden layout, a companion planting guide, and brochures from farmers' markets and gardening programs around the District. I cut up a free planting calendar and used those to mark off the months, along with a few lines of context about what was happening in the garden each month. I love the garden-y, organic (ha!) effect. Super fun to put together and fun to look through now. Now I just need spring to roll around again so I can get back into the gardening and crafting game.

Get Messy public link-up: February

Full disclosure, I had the idea for this spread before the public link-up prompt went out. The prompt was What is the one thing you most want your children (real or imaginary) to know about love?

I was thinking about the e.e. cummings prompt from last week and how much I love this poem. But these words don't exactly ring true for me. Because I like my body all (or almost all) of the time, not just when seen through the mirror of another person. I am lucky to never have seriously struggled with body image issues (and I truly think it is luck rather than strength of character or anything like that, and I have so much compassion for those who do struggle). And I appreciate my body even more nowadays. Bar Method shows me day after day that strong, healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes, including mine. So the "when it is with your body" is crossed out (kind of hard to tell here since it's in gold paint).

I realized along the way that this idea fits perfectly with the prompt. Because above all, what I want to impart to my future children is how to be comfortable in their own skin and in their own heads. To love themselves first before sharing that love with anyone else.