Before and After: Fearless Journaling

I am loving my handmade journal that I constructed in Kelly Kilmer's class at the Ink Pad. It is about halfway filled, which makes me feel good that I have done so many pages, and bad that I will soon be running out of space in it. It is still a challenge to work through steps 2 and 3--incorporating stamps/stencils and then putting words on the page. I feel a little pretentious adding the words, which is crazy, since I am the editor of a quarterly hospital magazine, monthly newsletter, and many articles on heathcare and also on art. My degree is in art, not journalism, but have been working as a writer and editor for over 20 years, yet somehow I am uncomfortable when I am introduced as "our staff writer, Linda Wyatt." I am much more comfortable being "our layout designer and part of the media services staff, Linda Wyatt."

I feel like I am going to make a mess when I add stamps or stencils, but it is definitely a an exercise I need in trying to let go of perfection, and to overcome the fear of messing things up. Sometimes the results are ugly, sometimes good, sometimes surprising, but it is always therapeutic.

Here are some before and after pages that I did this weekend. On my way home from work last week, I picked up a small flyer announcing a walk for climate change that was being passed out at the Roosevelt Island subway entrance. The tagline says "when are hipsters and bankers in the same boat?" and shows the Statue of Liberty halfway underwater. I was inspired to use some Dina Wakely face stamps that seemed like hipsters, and added the words "climate change." I also added extra white ink since the faces didn't print as well as I had hoped, then added black marker to make the images pop more. My favorite retro stencil of a 60s flower seemed to fit the hipster culture. The aqua rectangle in the center wasn't working after I added the stamping, stenciling and words, so I ripped it off. I like the raggedy effect, it seems to be a happy mistake, and adds to the hipster image.

I really liked the base of the collage page below with the crackled face. It was from a card that was mailed to me by a fellow doll maker and mixed media artist, JoAnn Robinson. I embellished lightly using some subtle techniques--fine outline on the sun stencil, filled with light gray marker; white squares through an old-fashioned touch tone phone face cover and some dots with a white gel pen. The words were printed on clear Avery mailing labels, left over from my ABCs of life doll project. http://lindaedkinswyatt.blogspot.com/2014/08/abcs-of-life-according-to-dolls.html As I was making it, it made me wonder some age old questions: Are we alone in the universe? What's out there? Is there life after death? I added some words with white gel marker, particularly the word "hope" since I sure hope there is a bigger, more intelligent being running the universe, because the Earth is certainly in need of help.