Weekend Journal

Staci's Pages

This is my friend, Staci. Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Painesville Recreation Center, she used to be my boss where I was the art instructor.  She's a gentle soul with a flare for the spiritual and creative.  When the stars align properly, we get to share a couple hours and catch up on life and art.  We also worked with 2 other wonderfully creative women in the center.  When the universe allows, all four of us get together.  It's magic.

Recently, the stars reached their proper alignment, and we had the opportunity to look at each other's journals and catch up on life.  Staci was there in the beginning of my art journaling classes that took place around Ro's kitchen table.  They were wonderful guinea pigs and supported my efforts wholeheartedly.  Staci was there for the next phase as I traded in Ro's kitchen table and spread my wings to a nearby art gallery.  She also attended one of my latest classes when she could.  She's been a huge support to me.  Thanks, Staci!

I love looking through Staci's journal pages.  She works very intuitively, working on her entire journal at once.  She begins by creating backgrounds for all of her pages and adds thoughts and images on the pages day by day on the page that feels appropriate.

Her pages are always filled with beautiful and exotic imagery, and she adds glitter, rhinestones, and lots of texture with stencils that she's made.  I love the orange rhinestones around the car.

Staci recently lost her father, and she had the opportunity to share his final days and hours.  She  found healing by recording some of the things that he said as he was making his transition.  One of the things he said was, "When I close my eyes, I go to different worlds!"  One can only imagine.....

Staci finds the most intriguing images and messages as she examines her backgrounds.  They always feel ancient and mysterious to me.

I really like this method of writing that she incorporated into these pages.  Each layer of writing is a different color written on top of the previous writing.  It makes it almost impossible to read and makes for an interesting background.  The student has indeed become the teacher.

This spread was inspired by one of my classes where we discussed "The Inner Critic", aka "The Committee".  I'm sure you've met them.  You know - the voices that tell you you're not good enough, you're not an artist, you CAN'T do something.  Staci told hers to "Shut the hell up."  I hope you tell yours the same!

BURNOUT IN ANGELIALAND

I haven't done any new journaling pages this week.  Well, that's not quite true.  I've been completing journaling projects to turn in for an upcoming gallery show.  I'm having a lot of fun completing these projects, but it's difficult feeling the pressure of a deadline.  I'll post photos of the completed projects soon - you might remember a couple of them.

I did complete some pages in my daily journal last week (or was it the week before?)  All of the surprise gift journals are lovingly completed and ready to be shipped, but they really took their toll.  I worked like a madwoman to get them finished before our vacation.  I have to say, I can't look at them too much because I like the finished products and they might want to stay here!  That's a good sign though, because I know it will give me great joy to know that they've brought their recipients a lot of pleasure.

These are the last pages I created.  This page was inspired by goodies I received from April Cole. 

This is an intuitive page where I highlighted the images that I could see in the baackground paint.

These three pages were inspired by the movies I was watching as I created the pages.  Can you guess what movies they were?

Ha!  I didn't think so.  The first page is from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", the second page is from "Pan's Labyrinth", and the last page is also from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".  I created the pages by first writing down lines from the actors and taking my color cues directly from scenes or the overall mood of the scene.  It was a lot of fun and made for some interesting pages.

So that's about it.  I think I'm officially burned out.  I read someone's blog post the other day (sorry, can't remember who wrote it), but it struck a nerve with me.  It was a real light-bulb moment.  The gist of the post was this - just because we love what we do doesn't mean it's not work.  A simple but profound thought.  I've been working day after day after day without time off!  So you know what I did yesterday?  That's right, I took the day off and enjoyed EVERY second of it!  I said to hell with the deadline, the journal, the creative process.  I cleaned.  I did laundry.  I began gathering things for vacation.  I stepped away from the work environment.  And you know, what?  I feel rejuvenated and creative today.  Know when to step away from your work!  I don't know about you, but I won't wait so long before my next day off!

CELEBRATE * LOVE * CREATE