Week 14 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE Documented Life Project is HERE. Happy April - a new month means a new theme focus for our challenges. Really excited to see this one :

This week the guest artist is Gina Lee Kim - a talented watercolour and mixed media artist and teacher. Her demo included a video which I especially enjoyed because it included a flip-through of her journal pages - so much inspiration there. Looking back through Gina's blog brought me to a post where she articulates something I very much believe.
She says : "Art journaling is a creative practice that teaches many things, like letting go of any guilt for taking time for myself. Making art isn’t being selfish; it’s part of good self-care. If I pursue the things that nourish my soul, I know I’m sending a profound message, especially to my son — that it’s never a waste of time to seek beauty, find meaning in my work, or to believe in my dreams"  
It's a great reminder about "Nourish" - my word of the year. Back to this journal spread....I also found a post that she did last year for DLP with another video flip through of a completed journal - that made me want to dive in with watercolours.

At first I tried a koh-i-noor watercolour directly in my Dylusions journal. Was okay, but not the wonderful effect you get with proper watercolour paper. I then applied the watercolour to the correct paper on the right, and then lifted some with a wet wipe and used that to apply colour to the edges of my spread in my journal. 

I will work on watercolour paper, and my intention is to apply machine stitching and to add a tag and clear envelope (inspired by Gina's journal flip through) before gluing the pages into my journal. Decided to use Gina's salt technique first, and I used these watercolours

I used a large fresh page as well as some leftover pieces to just explore some different colours

I love the different effects you get with watercolour, and last year spent months playing in my watercolour calendar journal. Doesn't this effect look cool once dry?
Click on any photo to see it larger 

I decided to start by trimming the turquoise/purple piece to fit inside my journal

First up those marks are begging to be turned into flowers and I want to add stitch straight away to create the journaling section

The pink stitching isn't as bright as the neon pink pen - I add stitching to the other page and add some darker pink to the flowers

I had seen a quote around that really spoke to me and seemed perfect for the "water under the bridge" prompt - here's where things didn't happen as expected. My lettering size was much larger than I'd intended and while I love the quote, it takes up most of my left page!

Forgot to take a proper progress shot, so just imagine the lettering without the stamping touches...While I think what to do now, I know I still want to make a tag so I cut the shape from that original piece of watercolour paper and grunged up the edge with a purple staz-on ink pad, and added some glittery corner stickers.

I have a heart leftover from another project which fits well on here, and some fibres for the bottom

I add interest to my backgrounds with various stamps and inks

There is no room for a transparent envelope, unfortunately, but I have a place for my tag and stitch it into place as I outline stitch both pages - I use 3 lines of "messy" stitching.

This is what the page looks like beneath the tag. I used the butterflies to symbolise rising above past mistakes.

Ready to glue my pages in - I added some doodles to the actual journal pages to frame the watercolours

and disguise the bit of discordant colour at the top of the original journal page (see it on the photo where I was testing the watercolour directly in the journal). Needed a little more embellishment on the tag too

And then the spread was done :-) Click on the photo to enjoy it larger

You can see all my posts about my Documented Life Project HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my DLP 2015 spreads HERE. You can also go HERE to see all of Gina Lee Kim's Flickr albums.