Just Be

At a recent Ink Pad-sponsored Julie Fei-Fan Balzer art class, some of the attendees were talking about an online course they were taking. I don't have time for online classes since I work full time, but one of the aspects of the class that struck me was that you choose one word each year as your special word.

That got me thinking about what word, of all the endless possibilities in the English language, I would choose. After a day or two of mulling it over, I chose the word BE.

Simple, right? Two letters, one syllable, no real hidden meaning or nuances. But as an introvert, a Virgo perfectionist, a wife and mother and career woman who squeezes art in whenever there is a free 10 minute window, BE means more than it appears to.

Be still. Be comfortable with yourself. Stop competing, judging, going, moving, striving. Get comfortable in your own skin. Stop beating yourself up and measuring achievements and failures.

I happened to pick up a couple new art/craft/mixed media items at the Balzer workshop--a stamp of a crazy little girl and some of Julie's new woodcut stamps.

Here's how this page came together:
1-the background is a digital collage that I did from a photo of my Rumi Valentine page. I flipped and repeated the background image, using Quark and Photoshop, and printed it out on ordinary paper.
2-the center section is made of recycled tea bags that were overprinted with stamps using a white stamp pad
3-I stamped the little girl on deli paper, then cut it out carefully, and used a glue stick to adhere it to the page
4-I put a strip of commercial beige paper with vintage handwriting on it
5-I cut out a rectangle of a Balzer woodcut stamp and placed it below the girl. At first I was going to have her standing on it, but then I decided that she would be more magical if she floated above it
6-I added words with my Dina Wakley empowerment words, which came with some face stamps I purchased about a year ago. I also added words with mini alphabet stamps