GRATEFUL .... (very)

Back from holiday, and although I've done a little work in my journal, most of it isn't for public consumption.  I do try to anonymise most of what I write about, but sometimes it IS just too personal to share.

On the first day of our holiday there was a death in the family, which left us trying to respond and organise some things from a distance ... never easy.

Nonetheless, it was warm and sunny and we managed to enjoy ourselves a lot of the time.  Returning to cold dark days and a funeral was a shock to the system, but in the aftermath there are many many things I feel deeply grateful for.  There was more than I could fit on a page really ... but this is the result.

I painted my page turquoise first, then added this glorious teal colour around the edge and roughly blended the two.  As I'm always saying - no need for fancy backgrounds when you're going to do a lot of work on top.

Then I began to add bits and pieces of collage, and (unusually for me) a photo face from a catalogue. When I do this I always make lots of changes to the picture to avoid copyright issues, and so that it becomes something original and unique.

Then it was out with the white Posca paint pen and lots of doodling, which joined everything together into something whole rather than random and unconnected.

And then all that remained was to write from the heart ... I almost never write quotes etc - this is MY journal and I generally prefer to use my own words.  Anything else might diminish its therapeutic value.

I know this is rather a brief posting - there is a lot going on in my life right now, not to mention the start of Holy Week.  I do, however, have a huge amount to be grateful for ....
Rosie X

GRATEFUL

Many of you will know that paint doesn't seem to be my natural medium, but I do keep trying to learn to love it, so that's what was happening here.  It may be purely a matter of laziness, in that I want to dive straight into a page and not have to gesso it first etc etc., but whatever I had some fun splodging paint about here.  I did a background of quite diluted paint (these are acrylics let down with water) and then used a baby wipe among other things to add more layers.

 Then because it was one of those times when I was just making a background and seeing where it led, I dug about in my collage materials and added a few images.  Although I forgot to photograph it at that stage, I used a technique I often resort to of asking myself what's the one word I want to put on this page?  This time it was "grateful" and so I wrote it in the middle - having learned the hard way that it rarely works to stick it at the top.

After that the creative juices just started to flow ... and although I do know that my writings here sound very Pollyanna-ish I am unapologetic about that!  It seems really important to me to regularly engage in the Count Your Blessings exercise - and all the more so when you're a bit down and dejected.  Its frighteningly easy to lock into a downward spiral in which you can only see negatives, but I find when you look for them that there are ALWAYS good things to celebrate and give thanks for.

You may notice that this is a page I made back in March ... when we were still hoping for a summer!  I haven't been doing a lot of journalling lately - it goes like that with me, I'll work all day every day in my journals for a while, and then I end up needing a change of activity.  I've got a sewing project on the go at the moment, but in a few days I'll return to my journal with renewed enthusiasm.

Sometimes I wish I was the sort of person who could concentrate on just doing one thing well - like sewing or making cards etc., or stick to just one medium, but I seem to be somebody who needs diversity and lots of different materials to play with.  Maybe you're the same?