Last Bit of Holiday Art Journaling for a While

Things are starting to get busy for me.  Christmas is less than two weeks away and I have shopping to do, wrapping to do, baking to do, and gift-making to do.  I have decided to put aside my holiday art journal until at least the day after Christmas.  I think there will still be time to fill it up by the first week in January when other art commitments will take its place.

I did finish two pages today.  Both were quick and easy.

 

This started out as Christmas paper that I had folded and sewn into my hand-made journal.  It is slightly redder than the photo makes out with a faint pink texture in the background and 3 tiny pink elephants.  I outlined the little elephants and then laid a large elephant mask on the paper and outlined it.  I used a different stencil in a Marakesh pattern over the outline and pounced frosted pink paint through the stencil.  Once the paint dried I outlined the pattern using the same Signo Broad pen in blue-black.  I added the words using the blue-black pen and tried to fill in the puffy letters with a light pink souffle pen which didn’t quite work.  It reacted with the blue-black pen so it is not as clean as I would have liked.  But I do like the page.  It is rather non-traditional but the frosty pink adds some holiday zest.

For this one, I drew and collaged various Christmas trees onto a page of Bristol paper in the journal. I had previously dripped Adirondack ink in red and teal on the top of the page.  I decorated some of the trees using Pitt Big Brush pens and Sakura souffle pens.  Others, specifically those collaged from colorful papers, I left as is.  It was a simple page to put together and I wish I had not used a page with the ink at the top.  But it is colorful and full of Christmas tree cheer.

You may not see me on the blog again until after Christmas, but rest assured I will be creating daily.  I hope to show you some of my hand-made gifts after the holiday itself.  I hope you find time in your busy holiday schedule for creativity too.  Good wishes to you all during this holiday season!

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Hope is the thing…

Today Dawn DeVries Sokol put out her second set of prompts for the 12.31 holiday art journal workshop. Every Tuesday and Friday she gives a thought prompt as well as a word of the day, a quote of the day, a song of the day and a suggested visual focus for your page.  None of these are required.  The prompts are there to provide inspiration for your holiday art journaling, if you need them.  If you are interested in finding out more about her free 12.31 workshop, you can find it here:  http://www.dawnsokol.com/1231/ .

The only prompt that called to me today was her visual focus which was to create a shape on the page using torn bits and pieces of paper and then to doodle and/or journal on or around the shape.  I already had a tall and narrow piece of red scrapbook paper as a page in the journal so I decided to use that as the base.  My first thought was to create a cross, which I did.  But that cross morphed into the shape of a Christmas star so I decided to go with that. The shape of the Christmas star reminded me a little of a tree so I drew a bird on one of the branches (rays).  I doodled and collaged scalloped shapes around the bottom and sides of the page and then doodled over the star.  I wrote the word HOPE on top of the scallops at the bottom of the page. I’m not sure where that came from, but it seemed to fit. Then I doodled small white and black stars on the background to mirror the large one.   I used Posca paint pens, a Fude ball pen in black,  and a white Signo Broad pen for all of my doodling.

As I was looking over the page, the word HOPE and the bird came together in my mind and I journaled the first verse of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” in the center of the bottom scallops.  For those who are unfamiliar with that poem it reads:

Hope is the thing with feathers

By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers  
That perches in the soul,  
And sings the tune without the words,  
And never stops at all,  
   
And sweetest in the gale is heard;          
And sore must be the storm  
That could abash the little bird  
That kept so many warm.  
   
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,  
And on the strangest sea;         
Yet, never, in extremity,  
It asked a crumb of me.

I rather like my patchwork Christmas star/cross and its association with Emily Dickinson’s poem.  Christmas (the birth of Christ) is, after all, associated with hope in the hearts of many.

This was an interesting creative exercise, pulling almost everything from some source inside that had nothing to do with planning or thought.  I love that about creativity.  It has much to do with intuition and process and less to do with the end product.

I hope you find some time in your day to creatively express your own intuition!