LB2016 : Layers of love

Lots been occupying my thoughts and it feels like more than a week since I shared with you. Finally completed my art journal page created from a Life Book 2016 lesson with Rae Missigman. If you click on her name it will take you to her blog - I always love her work. She's one of the team that began the Documented Life project, and she was also a teacher on 21 Secrets 2013 where I made this book cover project : 

Remembering this class was called "Layers of love", these are my page progress photos 

I thought this project would be easy for me because I love layering, but it came together very slowly. I've had a week of challenges and sadness which affected my art. The page got too dark, and even when I lightened it with the white I still wasn't inspired. I had faith that something would click eventually, so just walked away until that something happened 

Once I put that spray through the lace on a couple of edges (which came from working on another project), I was sorted. I knew I needed to add more light with a central focal so decided to check out my colour wheel for some inspiration. 

I was looking at the split complementary triad of Violet (of which I have lots!) and decided I wanted to add more yellow-green (currently a bit in the background) and "red" but decided I'd like more Pink brought up so not just in the background. I selected a couple of feature stencils, and grabbed my green before deciding that actually what would give more light to my page would be gold...and then while the stencil was still in place and the paint wet, I added sparkle with glitter as well. Loving it 

If you click on any photo you can see it larger with closer views of the layering. I was finding joy in my project at last :-)
When I did my last Life Book project called Wings & Light I enjoyed using a watercolour crayon with a blending stump to smudge the colour and I did that again here to add much of the pink - really pleased with how that worked.

Rae said at the end we should "add that one little flair that makes it your own". Because I created this page in my journal, I couldn't add stitch as I often do. She had added journaling to her page, and I decided that one of my "signatures" is using found text. She had talked a lot during the class about being kind to yourself, and about letting your art speak to you and for you...these words were right 

At last, here's the final reveal : 

Click on the photo to see it larger, or go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. I worked on this page without reference to the page facing it - it was always covered with a piece of baking paper to protect it. So I was more than thrilled when I saw the finished pages together in one spread - like they were made to go together!

You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.