Get Messy Dreams - Week 6

Get Messy Season of Dreams wrapped up a few weeks ago. And I just have a couple pages left to share.

I've almost finished reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and one thing that will stay with me is the idea that my inner artist is like a child. I believe that open sense of wonder and lack of fears children have is great way to push forward creativly. Also I love how when spread this way the ink looks likes nerves. 

A little bit of madness can be a good thing, right? Nothing too serious, more like childhood silliness. I have great memories of art making in college at 2 or 3am, when you're pushing yourself past exhaustion and come up with ideas you usually wouldn't. It can spark creativity and help to keep the creative ripples moving.  

Overall I loved this season. Like Season of Introspection, it dealt with understanding the psyche which fascinates me. It's also the second season where I filled all the pages in my handmade journal, which  I'm really proud of. 

Get Messy Dreams - Week 5

This week got busier than I expected, but I still managed to make a spread that's been in my head for a while.

I wanted to convey that sense of bleariness you get after opening your eyes. It's kinda like bokeh, before you're eyes can focus. I also wanted to portray a sense of dreams slipping away. Where these confetti dots drift away as you come awake. 

I made the background with distress ink, rubbing the ink pad on the paper and spraying a lot of water to make the colors bleed and run together. I love the dreamy water quality of it. For the dots, I used the end of a paintbrush and then went over each dot with my fingertip to blur it a bit. 

Weekend Plans: 

1. Get Messy Totems class

Get Messy Dreams - Weeks 1-4

 We're now over half way through the Season of Dreams and this is my first blog post on the season. I have to give props to everyone who posts weekly or even daily in some cases. Being more consistent is definitely a major goal of mine.

So back to the beginning...?! I was so excited when this season's theme was announced. I have always been fascinated by my dreams and even have some that I remember from when I was a child. I bought a dream interpretation book in college that I still go to today, if there's an element in the dream that sticks out to me.

And that's how I approach dream interpretation. I don't overthink it and I don't dwell on the details. I just think about the overall feeling and what one or two elements stand out. Then if I decide to interpret the dreams and none of the explanations make sense, I let it go. I'm all about just going with the interpretation that "clicks." If it doesn't, it doesn't and I move on. 

I decided to work in an unbound journal this season because I have an idea for the cover that I didn't want to get covered in paint. And I wanted the option of adding in more pages. I will admit this does bring some challenges in that I have to make sure I keep the journal in order. But I'll be worth it once I bind the cover. 

I started making pages a week before receiving the first prompts. I was just so excited to get started. The first few pages were heavily collage influenced and once I came back from my vacation, they moved towards more painted and or collaged with handprinted papers. I'd recommend hand painting paper to everyone. It's so satisfying to know you created every element on the page. 

These last few weeks of the season I think I'm going to try to delve deeper in the dreams and what they represent in a more abstract way. Dreams are so abstract to begin with and I want to convey that; the feeling of not quite remembering a dream or the feeling of coming out a dream. 

Weekend Plans:

1. Rearrange Bedroom

2. Organize craft room

3. Finish up One Little Word prompt for October

How I'm Doing: #100daysproject

I started this project later than most. My first collage went up on Instagram May 27th and I've completed my first 30. There are now 75 days left in the year (??!!) and I have 70 collages to make.

Over the weekend I got caught up with the new podcast How She Creates and decided to use the #5minutesofcollage idea to help me complete this project. This was a result of the conversation during the second episode that featured Katie Licht and Lauren Caterson.

My paper scraps are all in small containers and it'll be a nice challenge to rummage through them to quickly make a collage without second guessing myself. I'm also trying to trust my artistic intuition so I think this will be a great excersize for that as well.

Getting Back Into It

The working title for this blog post was "Catching Up." But then I realized that would be implying that I was behind in something.  As I'm trying to be more patient with myself, that idea was just bothering me.

So I took the Season of Music off. This really surprised me as I listen to music pretty constantly. But between family visiting and having to many lyrics to choose from, it got to be too stressful. And honestly, I think the break really helped. It gave me some more breathing space to explore ideas and I managed to take a 30 day collage class during that time, to stretch my artistic self.

I know I just up and ended at week 5 of Season on Introspection but I actually filled my handmade journal! Here are the last of my pages from week 6. This old wooden bench in my backyard is quickly becoming my favorite place to photography my journal.

So moving forward! I'm super excited about the next season of Get Messy. I already completed a spread and prepped another. And I'll be taking my journal traveling with me this season, as I'll be visiting Arizona in the beginning of October. I'll be staying with a friend who's an art teacher, so I may just bring my favorite pens and an alphabet stencil and then play with her supplies. 

Get Messy Introspection - Week 5

I set a goal this season to try every prompt. Since I only made one spread last week, I
had some catching up to do.

I attempted a "brain dump." And then covered it up. They were ugly words, written in a moment of self pity. My idea was to have some kind of writing about needing to be selfish every once in while but I decided that would still be to negative for a spread that I really ended up loving. 

Turns out stamping over writing is a great way to create some hidden journaling. The stamped quote reads: "just keep following your heartlines" A slight difference on a Florence + the Machine lyric. 

I'm trying to push myself to cover up layers. This is my art journal, nothing is precious and I need to keep reminding myself to trust my artistic instincts. 

My own definition of intuition: "we all vibrate at our own frequency." It's why we all understand things differently, why we can all look at the same prompts and have an infinite amount of takes on it. 

Another page with layers that got really complicated. So I just painted red over the top and simplified the female drawing. I'm really happy with the contrast of the drippy brush script with the stamped word and white line drawing. 

My take on what my thoughts look like and what's been on my mind. Overlapping and circling in my mind, my thoughts seem to come out of nowhere. 

I used a white crayon to create a resist pattern and LOVE how it turned out. It's such a simple watercolor technique that I will no longer be over looking. 

Weekend Plans:

1. Visit friends upstate

2. Work on #heartjournal

3. Housekeeping

4. Photography #100dayproject collages

Get Messy Introspection - Week 4

I have one spread this week. I was going to say "only one" but decided to go easy on myself. I was a little challenged by the prompts this week since I'm not confident in my writing. Especially with stream of concious writing. I get nervous about what might come out and have trouble embracing that process. So I set that prompt aside and dove into my dreams instead.

I always have a sence of disappointment when I wake up from a dream. Either by the alarm or the need to use the bathroom, I seem to wake up right when things start getting interesting. 

I love tearing paper and the texture it gives. And when working in collage I like to lay out the layers first. This is a snapshot of my layers when I was deciding where everything would go. I think about color, shape, and pattern repetition. At first I thought every piece of paper would be its own unique image but ultimately decided against that. It would be too busy and my dreams tend to have repeated elements, so I stuck with three main images and repeated the others. 

Weekend goals:

1. Work on my #heartjournal

2. Catch up on my One Little Word album

3. See some fireworks

4. Watch some Euro 2016