Homemade Artist Retreat--Part II

We decided to sleep in a little on Sunday since we'd stayed up late chatting, but we got to work after enjoying leftover scones and some Darjeeling. This earlier art journal entry by Lynda was my inspiration:

Great journal page by Lynda. Isn't her script gorgeous?!
Check out her process here: Step One, Step Two, Step Three, Step Four.

I had a hard time with the process. Laying down the initial colors was easy. Coming up with a concept was easy. Making a rich work of art was a lot harder. We each gave the other one of our gelli prints to incorporate, which was a fun challenge.

My print on the left.
Lynda's print on the right.
I immediately knew I wanted to use the spiral stamp on the left side of the page as a clock face.

Lynda went in beautiful directions with her pages and it was a lot of fun to see her creative process in action. Her challenge was that she chose paper from me that had a lot of red in it. It’s funny—she uses a lot of pink, but red, even the idea of red, gives her mental hives. I think she proved to herself, though, that red is definitely a color she should use—or at least she proved it to me! J

After working all day (with a quick break for grilled cheese with excellent ripe tomatoes) I had accomplished this in my handmade journal and had a slightly desperate feeling in my stomach:

I was done but it wasn't really finished.

Then we went out for an al fresco supper at in Providence, ate (in my case) a lovely seafood pasta dish while listening to live big band music, went for a little walk, made some goofy selfies, and topped it off with sublime lime tart and iced mocha.

We also spent some time while waiting for our food capturing what we’d done and felt so far. And that was the key for me.

My concept was about letting go of time every once in a while and how that’s uplifting and it was based on my stay with Lynda. When we got home and I saw my work from across the room I knew what was missing: all the experiences I was having. So I added text about that in the background along with some marks to separate concepts . . . and a circular stamp to mirror the clock face . . . and a square stamp to mimic the shape of the clock. And then I got out the Antique Linen Distress Ink, and that pulled it all together.

It unified everything and toned it all down a little and did some other indefinable thing, but I came to the conclusion that

Another page in my little Moleskine.

Time and space sometimes are the key,

and in the end I was really satisfied with my first foray into art journaling.