Life update and art journal share: How meditation works for me

Hey guys. Ive been super busy lately. June is a very busy month for our family. We have my father-in-laws birthday, my fathers birthday, Steve's birthday, my birthday, fathers day, and our wedding anniversary. This is the card I made as copper is the traditional 7th wedding  anniversary gift.

We purposely kept all of the days pretty low key. On my birthday I binge watched criminal minds episodes, Steve did the school run for me, I had a NAP, and went out for a great meal. The perfect day for me. Here are a few cards from my lovely friends at card club:

 and out for dinner:

Now we are back to normality for a few weeks. I want to get the garden tidied up before my MOM COMES BACK FOR A VISIT! That's right, my mama is coming.  I'm really exited if you haven't noticed by my dramatic use of ALL CAPS. She will be here for the last week of school for Scarlett, and her last week we have booked a week in the Isle of Wight. None of us have been there and everyone tells us its beautiful. We booked a cottage about a 1/4 of a mile from a sandy beach. You better believe I will be blogging all about it.

Ive also been playing in my art journal. This has been a difficult page for me. By that I mean I really liked it, then I didn't, then I was annoyed with myself for overworking it, and then I fixed it. It has been a great learning experience though. That's the amazing part of art and art journalling. All those emotions over some paint on a page.  It can take you through a range of emotions and you come out the other side learning something about yourself.

I started by putting a few stencils down, and then completely white washed the back round using gesso. Then I just continued stencilling and layering. Paying attention to what colours are over what and keeping in mind the overall composition.

I put a prima stencil down and used a distress tool with a victorian velvet distress ink to outline a
flower towards the center of the page. I then just used a mixture of gelatos, white and black posca pens and even a red sharpie to get the flower how I wanted. Now, I'm not in anyway a professional and I dont claim to be with my colouring. Meaning, im not going for realism.

Then I coloured in a stamped image of a Prima bloom girls stamp with prismacolour pencils. I cut it out with scissors and a cutting blade for the fiddly bits. I pasted it down using studio multi medium.

Then.....I ruined it. I put some awful lettering right above the flower and it looked..bad. I was mad at myself for an entire afternoon. I even mentioned it to my husband about the page screw up over dinner. Of course he said it looked great. He always does, bless him. I had a mini temper tantrum within myself saying how much I suck and I should just give up on art journalling right before I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and it was a Saturday. I had no rush so I like to start my day with some meditation. Whilst I was meditating I completely cleared my mind. It allowed me to shed all of my insecurities and get over my hurt ego.

When I was finished I approached my journal in a new way. I fixed it. I pulled some sheet music pages apart, and pasted it using white gesso giving a whitewash coat over it.  I took a script stencil and used some yellow distress ink over it, and stamped a Dina Wakely stamp using blue archival.  I used the archival ink as it stamps a more sharp image then the distress ink.

Ta-Da! I like it again. I mean I know its not perfect but I like the composition and I fixed it. That means something. I like the journey I went down with this page.  That's what its all about.. the journey.

speak soon lovelies!!

                                                                         Always, -Kass