DLP week 1

 I have managed to get my first DLP-inspired journal spread done just as the new prompts came out for next week :) The Documented Life Project 2015 prompts for the first week were using old papers and "Be your own Goalkeeper". Besides the DLP I am posting this for the ongoing  SimonSays Stamp challenges: Monday (Make new friends, but keep the old...) and Wednesday (Something new)

Just as I joined in the Documented Life Project 2015 I realized that my gesso is almost dry... So even though I managed to find old book pages that fit my taste ( old math and chemistry books :) I felt I couldn't fill the background with them. Besides, my next spread already had lots of green paint on it after cleaning up earlier projects, and it would have been a waste to cover it up. I ended up doing some stamping with background stamps that I hadn't ever used yet and painting my pic with acrylic paints. Here is work in progress, I used a the top of a weathered tree stamp to create branches among the firs.

I wanted to integrate the old book pages somehow, and chose to make a pocket for the TH January tag I was working on at the same time. Besides, the tag would carry my goals. I looked through the old chemistry book I planned to rip, and ended up choosing the contents page: the first chapter is titled "the principles of a stable system", and intrigued with it, I masked it with washi tape before spraying the page with Dylusions and Perfect Pearls mists. To my surprise the page had resist spots of its own accord, I think they look a bit like stars. Otherwise I managed to fit the pocket quite seemlessly into the scene on the spread.

While wondering where to find inspiration for art journaling, I had also looked at the Journal 52 prompt, which was Pathways. I felt that the path was important, and forests like the one I painted on the spread are full of paths. I pondered between finding and choosing paths... in Finnish it would perhaps be easiest to say "look for your path" which led me to "search and search again" = "search and research" i felt it suited me fine, since one of the words on my tag is "Do Experiments". I used my new Tim Holtz Cargo stencil to do the lettering, and chose the word Path to be in the center.