Just Paint

Back in college, there was a professor who taught a course called "The Teaching of Reading." Many years later, his favorite line still rings in my head: "It doesn't matter WHAT you read, it matters THAT you read." His idea was to instill a love of reading in kids and not judge them if they read comic books instead of literature.

A small abstract with layers of paint, painted deli paper, gesso and matte medium.

That is a pretty good idea to live by. An artist--or a writer or designer or any creative person--is constantly bogged down by the inner critic, who judges the work and squashes creativity. I recently took a day-long workshop with Dina Wakley; it was great fun and very productive. Dina is really funny and inspiring, urging us not to waste paint (wiping it on her apron instead of throwing it away). Dina has her inner critic's mouth taped shut. She would look a a work in progress and squeal "oooh, I loooove it!" One of her mantras is "done is better than good."

StayCation series of abstract art experiments using Dina Wakley's painting method.

On my recent summer PaintStayCation, I pulled out my paints, board, paper and tools and just created without too much thought. Lots of experiments, a few successes, and a few failures. A voice from another workshop rang in my ear...Julie Fei-Fan Balzer saying: "knock it back." Unlike working in watercolor, where it is hard to do things over and make corrections, with acrylic you can just gesso over areas that you don't like. Sometimes you get a shadow or hint of the underlayer, sometimes it is completely covered up. I kept layering and repainting until I kind of liked what was there.

Another goal with my art--in addition to shushing the inner critic--is not worrying about what anyone else thinks. Painting in public has always made me uneasy, thinking I am on display and need to be brilliant. On a long Amtrak trip, I pulled out my journal, watercolor pencils, watercolor set and a little koi paintbrush. The brush has a well that you can fill with water and squeeze, which makes a water jar unnecessary, and is idea for travel. I put in my earbuds, cranked up the music and painted away, ignoring my seatmate and other passengers. Here's the journal page that I made:

Abstract swirls and thoughts on a journal spread done while traveling.

Back in highschoool, I knew I loved art but didn't know who I was as an artist. I was experimenting with drawing fashion figures, painting and sketching interesting old homes, and trying to find the right box to fit in. My art teacher looked as some things in my sketchbook and pointed me to some freeflowing, swirly designs and said: "this is what is really special, unique to you." My doodle, my swirls, my musings and random thoughts are now part of my "toolkit" and what I incorporate into a lot of my work.

The journal pages were started on a recent Amtrak trip, and finished at home, with several layers of writing, paint, gesso, watercolor and markers.

It is still hard to squash that inner critic, easy to compare myself to other people, well-known people. Easy to feel discouraged. I remind myself often that art is more about the process than the product. I think of my long-ago professor's words and say my art mantra to myself: "It doesn't matter WHAT you paint, it matters THAT you paint."

Shared Hands Project

An arty friend suggested that three of us do a fun mixed media project last fall. The idea was to make four hands--three right hands (we would each get one of the right) and one left hand, that would be the shared art project. We were to each add something to the hand then mail it back to the originator.

I traced my hands onto hot pressed watercolor paper and made three similar right ones and one left.

Click here for the link to my post about the start of the project, which I posted on January 9.

My artistic influence was the beautiful east Indian henna "tattoos" that are painted on women's hands for special occasions. I tried to create that effect with the stencils and colors I chose.

For the left, I used a stencil with molding paste, and after it dried, painted it partially with my favorite shade of turquoise acrylic. The stencil was one that I had used on the other three. I popped it in the mail and wondered how it would look when it was returned. I eagerly waited for the mailman to bring me the other people's art, and for my final, finished left hand to arrive. It was a loooong wait.

One of the artists decided to make a book of hands as the shared project, and made us each individual clay hands with an east Indian influence. The other artist made each of us a small art quilt of her hand, that is absolutely gorgeous and intricately made. There was a bit of confusion about who should mail what to whom and when.

There were holiday and health delays, but yesterday the finished left hand arrived, and I love it!

The left hand was done collaboratively by three artists; the right hand is one of three similar I kept for myself.

I love the way the paints and inks ran and created a marbled effect, and also the index finger that goes from blue to white with random dots, and ends in a pink nail. The font on the word Bloom is so pretty, as is the hand lettering on Joy. On the right, I used square mini-brads for texture. My art friends adhered dimensional stars which add a subtle texture to the turquoise hand.

I also couldn't resist drawing and painting and stenciling and stamping on both sides of the "hand book" pages that I made for my friend Karen. She traced her hand on some heavy watercolor paper and mailed it to me.  I used some of my favorite Artistcellar stencils and stamps from Ink Pad NYC and Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

Top of Karen's left "book hand", which was unplanned and instinctively stamped, stenciled and painted.

This was the unfinished left hand that was mailed out.

These are the three right hands. Artistcellar pocket stencil words were used.

Reverse side (palm) of Karen's "hand book" page.

Abstract Sunflower ATCs

Sunflower ATCs should be easy, right? So why did I struggle with making them? I wanted to stay away from cliches, and decided to go abstract...maybe I should have just gotten out my paints and done cutsie little yellow petals with brown centers and called it a day. But I love abstract work, so I sat down at my art table and got to work.

Abstract Sunflower ATCs

First, I started by pulling out my gelli plate, brayers and yellow and magenta acrylic paint. Using various Artistcellar and other stencils, I made about 50 prints on deli paper. They were hideous. Colors too bright, prints too sloppy.

So next I tried layering them onto various papers that I had prepared with a white gesso surface. Some improvement, but still not great.

The next step was stamping some "petals" over the top using sepia archival ink and white printmaking paint on two different Julie Fei Fan Balzer stamps. Better, but not great still. I added a spiral center in sepia and black with an old Retro Cafe Arts stencil, then used a black stamp pad around the edges of the ATCs.

I set the ATCs in my unfinished art box thinking an idea would come to me to improve them. Then I went away for a long weekend to something called "The Letting Go Weekend" in upstate New York. My brother had a lot of insight from going to a previous weekend retreat, so I gave it a try. It was pretty healing and illuminating. I did quite a lot of journaling during the event and feel less stressed, even less compulsive about needing to make art--although I am not entirely sure if that is a good thing or not.

This weekend I decided to finish the ATCs and meet the trade deadline so I added some words with tiny round alphabet stamps and called it a day. So, they aren't the best art I ever made. I don't love them, but like the name of the weekend retreat, I am learning to "let go," move on, and accept that I am not perfect and will not always love my work but I can just meet the deadline and move on. AND maybe somebody will think the ATCs are terrific, after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right?

Printmaking and Painting and My Art Staycation

Today officially starts my week-long  ART STAYCATION! Unofficially, it started Saturday morning. I pulled out most of my art supplies and scattered them around the living room in organized chaos. Saturdays seem to be the day when I just create a mess, painting backgrounds that don't look like much, pulling prints off my new gelli plate, cutting, measuring, mixing and splattering. On Sundays, I am more rested and often manage to figure out a way to pull the unrelated art bits into some kind of unified piece. Sometimes it is just a little edge of a print that becomes an ATC or a tag.

Collage with Gelli printed deli paper and stencils, assorted papers,
vintage royalty free images and printout of original drawing

Collage using vintage magazine ad, stenciled
Gelli printed deli paper and assorted papers

For my staycation, I have a few plans. One is to work on my faces using the Jane Davenport method. I have a vision of doing something bigger than an ATC, incorporating angels and wings and Medieval illuminated writing on it. I have sketchbooks and journals full of ideas that I scribbled down in moments of inspiration, so I will pull them out and see if anything turns into a solid idea.

Layers of Gelli-stencil deli paper prints, thermofax prints and assorted papers

I hope to pull my 6x6 series from the Julie Balzer workshop into one piece, maybe even hang it on the wall. Strangely, our walls are kind of empty, and my husband keeps saying: "Why don't you hang some of your work up?" Why indeed? Well, much of it is in art journals--can't hang them very easily. Some pieces are too personal, too in-your-face and I don't want to look at them every day. Some of them remind me of where I have been, emotionally, and looking at them evokes feelings I don't really want to revisit.

There's a couple unfinished projects on the horizon: my finishing the hand-quilting on my grand-niece's handmade fabric piece, repairing broken jewelry--some commercial and some handmade. Then there's the canvases...I made a "junque journal" in a Julie Balzer class, which is now so fat it will hardly close. So, I need a new one. I had some painted canvases that were intended to be covers for the first journal, but they weren't quite right. So, yesterday I gessoed over them. I had used some fiber paste through a stencil, and the gesso didn't cover it, so I used molding paste on top. Still didn't cover it. So that's a back-burner project in two parts...making the canvases look okay, and putting them together into a new journal.

Here's the 2"x3" printmaking experiments from yesterday. Two will be traded, one is a "keeper" and the rest will go in the nowhere land storage bin and either be reworked, added to another project, or used for an emergency greeting card.

Journaling, Deli Paper and Gelli Plates

If I love art journaling, does that make me a journalist? Is there a special name for someone who combines their artistic experiments and random thoughts in a journal? Jane Davenport coined the terms Artomology and Artomologist. Mostly I love art, but I also love to write. Sometimes I get so busy doing art that I forget to post to my blog. And sometimes I get immersed in writing and forget to paint.

Glancing through my newest journal, I realized I was waaay behind in posts. So, here are a bunch of photos of what I have been doing over the last few weeks. Topping of the list of what I have been doing lately is that I took a great course at the Ink Pad with Julie Balzer. (Here's the link to my blogpost and photos of the art I made in the all-day workshop.) So many people in the class loved printing with Gelli Plates that I broke down and bought one. I didn't go all "cray-cray" as Julie would say...I just got a little one for about 10 bucks. I have been playing with it with mixed results. Mostly the prints are sloppy because I am sloppy. Kind people say I have a loose hand, and I deeply admire people with great control and the ability to make fine, detailed paintings and drawings. But, in the spirit of embracing my own skills, I need to let go of the need for control and perfection and roll with my sloppy side.

These journal pages use a lot of Artistcellar stencils, especially Jane Davenport's faces, some of my favorite Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamps, markers, inks, acrylic paint, newsprint and paper scraps. The group of ATCs were made using the Ink Pad's exclusive NYC stencils, designed by Michelle Ward.

I created a little pocket to tuck in small items that I want to be sure to use in future journal pages.

Experiments with deli prints, stencils and stamps

Experiments (on left) with tweaking my handwriting, and (on right) with layering deli paper and gelli prints

ATCs created with layering gelli prints, acrylic paint, papers and
Michelle Ward's NYC stencils, exclusive to The Ink Pad

Collage of candle packaging and Artistcellar's small and large chakra stencils

Unfinished journal pages. Orange tabs of deli paper were added to
handmade journal for strength and stability.

Journal collage with random thoughts and random elements

Experimental page using Jane Davenport's tilted up stencil, Artistcellar
pocket stencil flower, chalk, white pen and washi tape on black cardstock

Experimental page with stamped eyes, Jane Davenport face stencil,
Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamps and random thoughts

Working in a Series: 6x6x6 With Julie Balzer at the Ink Pad

Yesterday, I was in art heaven at a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer workshop, sponsored by The Ink Pad, which was held at the Westbeth community art center in New York's West Village. What could be better than an entire day being creative, playing with paints, stamps, stencils and collage? And of course, being surrounded by like-minded artists is inspiring, with the exchange of ideas and tips.

 

 

I didn't know what to expect, all I knew was that we were to bring six pieces of 6" x 6" watercolor paper and a whole bunch of art supplies. We all showed up looking like we were about to take a flight to Paris, with rolling suitcases full of paint brushes and supplies rather than clothing and accessories ... but just in case we needed that one special item that was accidentally left home, we had to bring almost everything, right?

 

Unlike many classes where the instructor shows you a finished product and says: "This is what you will have at the end of the class," Julie purposely did not bring samples so we would create without a plan or vision in mind.

 

This piece was held out, and did not get the final layer of paint, stencils and stamps.

 

We worked in layers, having no idea what was coming next, working on all six at the same time. Well, I am a notorious over-achiever, so I worked on nine. After about the third step of the lesson, I decided I liked one of the pieces too much to go on, so I tucked it in my bag. I often wonder "what if" so I held it out to compare to the finished pieces and see which I liked more.

 

Julie is a terrific instructor. She is really funny and fun-loving, but also serious and real, and is able to be direct, in control, non-judgmental, and make everyone feel special and talented.

 

I used my favorite acrylic paint colors, some of my favorite stamps--commercial ones and hand-carved originals too. I also used some of my favorite stencils, mostly from Artistcellar. After the painting was done, we added collage materials. I had all kinds of papers, including some imperfect vintage magazine pages gifted to me from Susan Morgan Hoth.

 

I was deeply engrossed in my own process, but at one point, I looked at what the woman across the table from me was doing and saw an awesome stencil, which really called my name. I loooove urban industrial design, especially NYC manhole covers, doorknobs, and architectural grill work.  The manhole cover stencil she had used was from a set of designs by Michelle Ward, which are exclusive to the Ink Pad. Fortunately the Ink Pad had a mini shop set up and I ran across the room and snagged a set.

 

My last layer uses Michelle's stencils. It was late in the day, I was a little tired, and my artwork was a little damp (even after blasting it with a heat gun) so a few of the images came out imperfect, but the workshop was all about allowing yourself to be imperfect and pushing ahead anyway.

 

In the photo of the nine pieces, the one in the center is the piece that I held out and tucked in my bag. It is very "me" and a little too safe, a little too much of what I usually do. The eight pieces that have additional paint, stamps and  Michelle's stencils are a less safe, less predictable, but still have my style and feel.

 

In case anyone is wondering why I chose the words that are in to collages, especially the Heinz Baked Beans, it was pretty random. I like to use text--especially in foreign languages and assorted fonts--as a design element. I was tearing some of the vintage magazine ads and that text was the size and style that felt right at the moment. Not that I don't like Heinz Baked Beans...they were a staple of my childhood diet...but now my taste buds prefer the organic, homemade varieties.

 

 

Woven and Burned Paper ATCs, With a Quilterly Influence

Woven paper was the challenge in a recent Paper Traders yahoo group exchange. We were to make ATCs that included some degree of paper that had been woven. It could be a little section, or it could be the whole piece. The theme seemed a natural fit for me: I have tons of paper scraps, and I love weaving. The challenge for me was that ATCs are really small--only 2.5" x 3.5"--so weaving little teeny strips, without a loom for support, was a little tricky.


Woven ATCs using paper scraps, washi tape, lace and fabric scraps.
These used several sentimental scraps, so were kept for my own collection.

I rifled through my boxes and bins looking for thin, pretty strips of paper that were too pretty to throw away, and gathered them together. I used pieces of commercial paper as well as pieces from edges of paintings and painted paper. First, I arranged them in stripes, trying to alternate light and dark, and fat and thin pieces. As I went along, I incorporated washi tape and newsprint and fabric scraps to make it a little more interesting.



A little tape held the paper "weft" fairly secure at one end, but putting in the "warp", and then trying to glue it all down without knocking it all out of alignment, was really challenging. When I finished, I had five little woven pieces. They were cute, but cute wasn't enough. And I don't really "do" cute. So, I asked myself the eternal question: "What next?" They seemed to need a center piece, so I auditioned birds, butterflies, famous quotes and flowers. It all seemed so boring.

So, I stepped a little out of my comfort zone and tried something I had not done in years: intentional burning. Using a permanent black ink pad, I printed some of my favorite Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamps on a cream "linen" paper. When dry, I cut them out, leaving about a 1/2" edge. Next, I carefully burned the edges. I worked at my kitchen sink, with the water gently running, and blew out the flame or wet it when it was burned to my liking. 

These three woven paper ATCs were traded.

The little geometric burned prints gave the woven backgrounds some oomph, and once the burned pieces were dry and cool, I glued them to the woven bases. The finishing touch was running a sepia stamp pad along the edges of the ATC base to give it an aged look.

The response from members of my art exchange was that they looked like mini quilts. I thought: "Quilts? That was not at all what I had in mind. They were not supposed to be teeny little quilts." But their quiltiness should not have been a surprise. I am a quilt lover and collector, a former art-quilter (retired from that art form due to shoulder injuries) and a former textile designer. So, quilts must be so much a part of my history and my makeup that the quilt style just bubbled to the surface. And it makes me wonder...hmmm, how WOULD this design look as a gigantic quilt?

Wondering About Life and the Road Not Taken

 

"Wondering" journal page with words added

The recent holidays were kind of a dry spell artistically. My few journal pages that I had time for looked blah. Looked safe. Looked okay. But they lacked the spark, the feeling that you get in a creative moment, or creative streak, when you feel inspired, when you try new things, when experiments work beautifully and even the messes are kind of good.

A few new supplies from The Ink Pad were just what I needed to kick-start my 2016 art journaling. Some Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamps caught my eye, so they came home with me. A stamp of eyes from a famous painting spoke to me, and they too came home. Some paint, some stamp pads and a new white signo pen, and I was revved up and ready to experiment.

I started by testing the stamps on brown paper bags to see how they looked, and rotating them to form patterns--well, I am, at heart, a textile designer so making repeating patterns is second nature. The Balzer stamps are kind of like what I would carve if I had time, a big studio, and an undamaged shoulder. And of course skill at detailed carving...which I kind of don't have.

I ended up with 4 or 5 new pages in my journal. On the last page, I combined a stamp of the eyes, and added part of a Jane Davenport stencil for the rest of the face. I pulled out my watercolors and randomly added color. At the bottom, I used leftover strips of painted deli paper and some of the experiments with the new Balzer stamps, along with some recycled washi tape (from an envelope).

"Wondering" before the words were added

I thought I was done, but the page seemed to be missing something. The next day I added words that came to me as I looked at the page. It made me wonder what my life would have been like if, at any point, I had taken an different fork in the road. I realized that I probably would have ended up at the same place. Art, and wanting to be an artist--more than  anything--drove me. New York was like a magnet, and I couldn't imaging living anywhere else. I couldn't live with myself if I had never tried to be an artist, and never come to New York.

Probably some details would have been different. I might have gone to a different college. I might have taken different classes, had different teachers, different friends. But the big things I needed to do, the big life lessons that needed to be learned and experience...I am guessing would have been the same. We don't get a do over in life. In art, sometimes. The beauty of doing digital design is that you can save something, duplicate it, and then experiment of the copy. If you don't like it, you can delete it. Life has no command Z. Journaling is more like life--you can paste over, repaint, cut out something you don't like, even cut up the whole design. But you still never get back to the blank page exactly as it was. It stops some people from experimenting. Sometimes it stops me, but when something is really important, when an idea is really driving me, I work through the fear of failure and push ahead.


New stamps that sparked my creativity

Unplanned Stamping

Usually my work table is covered with bright color splashes. Today, for unknown reasons, I was in a sepiaish, black and white, earth tones mood. I started puttering around yesterday, using assorted favorite stamps with white printmaking paint, and printing a bunch of teabags for future use.

Some of the smaller teabags were printed using a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer geometric stamp. Once dry, I adhered them to ATC blanks with a gluestick. My favorite whimsical girl stamp called to me today, and I used her on top of the printed teabags. I added some tiny words that I had previously output from a laser printer onto clear Avery mailing labels. I made a total of seven ATCs, each a little different. The one above will be traded in the October Paper Traders Winner Take All, where group members submit any type of ATC...the group leader pulls a name randomly and that person wins all the cards for the month.

I used up the leftover white paint from my ATC-making by painting broad, uneven strokes onto a black page in my journal. Once dry, I used an assortment of Julie's stamps with the little girl, which became today's journal page. The photo is a little blurry, but I liked the way it came out. It was totally unplanned. I really was just cleaning my brush on the black page. One thought led to another, and I started grabbing stamps and printing, and the page just emerged. Sometimes art is planned, sketched, thought out, and measured. Sometimes, as with this page, it just flows out unplanned.

Jane Davenport Inspired Paper Dolls

 

Artistcellar's Jane Davenport Face Stencil with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamps, shrunk to doll size

The other day on my lunch hour, which has now become--after quickly scarfing down my mid-day meal--my art hour, I realized that my love of making quirky grown up paper dolls was not unrelated to my love of faces. In fact, it suddenly made complete sense.

I had been studying Jane Davenport's Whimsical Faces DVD and teaching myself her method of painting faces on my lunch hour. It occurred to me that I could take the paintings, shrink them down to the size of the doll head on my template, and really kick my dolls up a notch. I had been using a variety of faces--some from magazines, some from my own small drawings, and some from vintage royalty free clipart.


This face is from my own design, based on Jane Davenport's method

I also decided to try making my own template for the body parts. I found the vintage paper dolls a little sexist, with ridiculously tiny waists and contemporary templates rather blah. My own template is a work in progress.

The papers are my own design. I printed my doll template on cardstock, back to back with my paper/fabric designs. The butterfly wings, shoes and crown are royalty free images from The Graphics Fairy.

Hope But Anticipate Journal Collage

 

This journal page started with the idea of experimenting with transparency--while at the Ink Pad, I saw some a big pad of gorgeous, preprinted transparent paper by a very well-known mixed media artist with his own line of supplies. I mulled over the idea of buying it, but being frugal, decided to print my own. And after all, why use somebody else's designs when I have a computer full of my own designs and collaged images that I created in Photoshop?

 

So, I found some similar paper, cut it to size, and printed a few sheets on my laser color printer. It came out beautiful and printed easily. Today, I dared cut it up and experiment. I tried two different journal pages.

• I loved the sheerness of the semi-transparent paper
• I didn't love the lack of stickability...I tried matte medium and also my favorite glue stick. With the matte medium, it buckled and didn't stick very well. With the glue stick, it stuck a little better. I placed the experiment (covered with waxed paper) under a heavy cast iron pot and will see soon what a little time and pressure does to it.

On the piece above, I recycled a hideous painting I did recently as lunch-hour therapy. By laying a section of partially painted deli paper over the watercolor and adhering it with matte medium, I was able to keep some of the underneath image, yet partially mask the ugly parts. After it dried, I then added some of the new transparent paper--the stripe of vintage French script and the butterfly. Next, I put a lacey stamp and a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamp made from one of her woodcuts. At the top I used a strip of newsprint from the New York Times.

 

Reflecting what is going on in both my life and in the world, and probably inspired by the butterfly image, the words "hope for the best, anticipate the worst" came into my head, so I wrote the words on the page freehand with markers.

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

Throat Chakra Journal Page

When a new box of art supplies I recently ordered arrived, the first thing I wanted to use were the new Artistcellar chakra stencils. They still have the little ATC-sized chakras stencils too, but some of the fine detail is hard to get (if you are a messy, loose-handed artist like me!)

Well, I am a little rusty on my symbolism, and pulled out the first one that caught my eye, a pretty triangle/heart combination. After I looked up what it symbolized I should not have been surprised--it is the throat chakra symbol.

For at least the past 20 years, that has been the chakra that I needed to work on. Why? Panic disorder overwhelmed me back in about 1992 and I got to the point where I couldn't even speak. I had agoraphobia also. I suffered from frequent sore throats, and even had a barium x-ray to see what was wrong.

 Finding my voice, using my voice, getting over the fear of speaking, and even being able to actually speak took a long time and a lot of work.

Although I had a problem using my voice, I did express myself through art and writing, and also began to study reiki as part of my healing process. So, 20 years later the throat chakra is still the one that calls to me from a pile of stencils.

I used a painted deli paper background on the journal page...something that I learned about (and love) from taking a recent Julie Fei-Fan Balzer class. I chose to use one of my painted papers that had a lot of turquoise; blue is the color of the throat chakra. I used an ordinary pen to trace the shape, then filled in with lime green marker and lime silk acrylic paint. Why lime? Well, I love it, but also, it is the color of the heart chakra.

After the chakra design was done, it seemed that the page needed more, so I added some words that felt appropriate using little alphabet stamps and Dina Wakely empowerment words, applied with a black archival ink stamp pad. Last, I added little dots of turquoise lumiere paint. I always seem to put dots in my journal pages...why, I don't know. They probably symbolize something, so if you know, leave me a comment please.

For the extroverts of the world, this the reason I repeated the word "brave" many times: it takes an enormous amount of energy and focus and bravery to beat panic disorder, and to learn to speak up without stuttering, stumbling, opening your mouth and having no sound come out, or worse--crying.

Journal Therapy

After a very intense week at work, and a really, really long and good sleep, some time to just putter in my art journal was most needed today.

I randomly chose some scraps from leftover projects: splatter painted paper from a (paper traders yahoo group) PaperTraders ATC house project, some of my own textile designs (scanned and laser printed, then over printed with stamps and white printmaking paint), printed teabags and painted deli paper from a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer class.

I used a glue stick and matte medium to adhere the various papers around the edges. Next I chose a big colorful ad from a Corcoran real estate booklet as a center spread in my journal--a luxury apartment that bears absolutely no resemblance to my apartment at all. I glued it on with a heavy matte medium to make sure the heavy Corcoran ad stuck.

Next steps: some green accent stripes, a green splatter newsprint circle, and a tea bag, printed with a geometric Balzer stamp and a white stamp pad.

Final step: I used a new Artistcellar stencil to put some flower shapes on the page. They were randomly placed and I applied white printmaking paint using both a small makeup sponge and my finger. I was tempted to write on it, but sometimes colors and shapes are enough, so I quilt while I was ahead. Well, I also couldn't find the pen I wanted, or just the right word stamps and stencils so I decided to leave the page wordless...well, not exactly wordless since there are words in the Corcoran ad and in the newsprint, but wordless in that I didn't add any meaningful, heartfelt words to the page.