Art Journal - My Family Tree

Happy Friday, to all my bloggie friends!  To celebrate this weekend, I am posting my first double page spread from my art journal.  I had watched so many videos from YouTube on art journaling, that I was blinded by the thought of starting an art journal.  I wanted to, so badly, and even ordered one of the blank journals from my friends at Paper Wings Productions.  The problem was that I blankly stared at the blank pages weeks before I finally got the nerve to put some ink on the paper!  Once I sprayed the first splotch of color, my world opened up, and I work a little in it everyday!

I was afraid to start a page, and not know how to finish it. Now that I have realized you don't have to sit right down and complete a whole page at once, it has become a lot easier and not so frightening.  If you have several pages "in progress" at the same time, you can work on which ever one you feel like working on. AND, if you don't feel like working on one you have started, you CAN start another!

So, on this layout, I started by spritzing several colors of spray mists. I used  The Dylusion Mists by Ranger in the orange, yellow, and green. On the right hand page, I adhered a sheet of handmade mulberry paper to the page with Golden Soft Gel Matte medium. It was a green color, so I thought I would draw a tree shape, since I love nature so.  Well, I am not an artist, and my tree was a little lopsided.  I also had adhered a hand full of inchie squares that had a peacock feather "eye" around the tree's branches.   After looking at the arrangement for a few days, and not really liking what I had done, I took some white Gesso from Golden Products, and painted a layer of gesso over my tree!  1- 2 - 3- GONE!

I decided instead, to use Light Molding Paste from Golden, and a Family Tree Scrapbook Stencil I had, to stencil a tree right in the middle of both pages, making it a two-page spread. I scraped some of the gesso from the peacock feather "eyes", stamped some flowers at the base of the tree, coloring them with purple Lumiere paint, and stenciled the letters from the tree stencil "My Family Tree" across the bottom of the page.  I then wrote ". . is full of nuts" and knew this page was finally coming together. I added the Wheelie Girl stamped image from My Favorite Things below the tree, and wrote the names of a few of my relatives on the leaves of the tree; each branch representing a branch of the family. In the top left of the page, I added a die-cut that says, " the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, and added tiny white dots to the flowers with my picket fence white Distressed Marker.

It was finally to a point where I was somewhat pleased with how it turned out. I admitted to myself that I wanted this journal to be a learning and growing experience, and if I started out with a "Perfect Work" I wouldn't need to learn a thing.  Realization can be a very humbling experience!

I hope you have enjoyed travelling down this road with me, and have learned a lesson or two along the way!  If you don't jump in with both feet, you will never be able to learn or grow!  So have a great weekend, and go try something NEW whether it be a sport, or  craft, or dance, or wherever your interests lie. See you again soon.

Mindy