Mixed Media - How are you ?

I always held the belief that a scrapbook page should be done in a day, I often worked away at one page until it was done, and only then did I begin another. THEN I discovered the wonderful world of mixed media. The main issue being drying time. Yes, I can dry it with my heat tool, but I found it heats up my other pages too and whatever is on the back of the page - which I do not necessarily want. So I am enjoying not rushing, just taking my time and keeping coming back to work on a page.

My pages seem to have so many deep meanings, I want to capture my inner thoughts and feelings, things that are special or have some significance to me. Through my art journalling I can right injustices, record my memories, express myself in a way that is deep and meaningful to me.

This page is my first venture into collage. I am inspired by the work by Sandra Van Den Bogaard and others, not that I could ever produce work as wonderful as that, but what I like about mixed media is that it is so personal. So long as I like it, thats all that matters. There is no right or wrong, nice or not nice, its a totally subjective experience. I am never afraid to try new things : if it doesn't work out, then that ok, I learned something. Experimentation is soooo exciting :-)

What I wanted to portray in this page is that sometimes people are not ok ! When passing by some people and they ask you 'How are you?', they sometimes dont even pause in their stride to wait for your response. The expected response is 'good', but what if you're not ? Do you stop them and say. "Well actually, I'm having a bit of a hard time at the moment.....etc". No, you dont do that. We conceal how we feel, being dishonest with ourselves really - hence the Pinocchio nose and the little sapling growing there. It may seem to be a negative message, but its not really, its capturing reality, an everyday occurrence.

The background was sprayed with dylusions sprays, the collage was made from magazine cut outs. It takes ages looking through magazines for just the right images, then piecing them together and embellishing them with pens, crowns, eyes etc ! I think I found the perfect pair for this pages deep message. The words were stamped with an alphabet stamp, then written over with platinum liquid pearls, highlighted in black and then white pen. The edging was done with Hero Arts edge set, and the thought bubbles were using an old Stampin' Up! set.

I enjoyed the challenge of collage and will definitely be venturing here again.

Thanks for visiting, hope you found some inspiration :-)