Zero Tolerance???

 

Only two pictures of this page because I completely forgot to take photos as I went along .... I blame menopausal brain death!

However you can probably see below how it started out - as a painted background onto which I stencilled with a lighter blue.  The bird on the line are done with washi tape, and I couldn't resist this stone angel!  That was as far as I got for a while .... I do sometimes work that way, just make the "beginnings" of a page and then let it lie awhile until I'm ready to work on it.  Sometimes I never get to that point, and then I might gesso over it or cover it with paper.

However, on this occasion I found the words zero tolerance in a newsletter and knew immediately what I wanted to write about ... the question I keep asking myself, why I am becoming so much less tolerant of bad spelling and rudeness and any number of other things as I get older?  I don't know - does it have something to do with having less time ahead of you than behind?  Other people I ask about it say they are the same, but I never WANTED to be a grumpy old bat making speeches to people that begin with "young man .....".  Lord, maybe I'm becoming my mother????

So then of course it was dead easy to come up with a whole list of stuff that makes me cross ... and I could have written more!  Except of course that I didn't want to admit (even to myself) just how very VERY cranky I can be...

And finally of course I had to add my usual doodling just in case the page looked a bit empty - but now I look I seem to have drawn fireworks??  All this tells you that I hav, alas, become the proverbial grumpy person you would do well not to cross - perhaps the angel's tears are for the nice person I used to be??? Help.

GRUMPY ...

Do you ever get into one of those moods where you are just thoroughly out of sorts with yourself, and kind of itchy scratchy cranky?  What our parents used to call "got out of bed the wrong side"?  I hope you do and that it isn't just me!  Anyway, it was one of those days, so when I found this picture in a magazine it really spoke to the way I was feeling ... and before you know it a journal page was the result.

I really didn't know what I was planning to do, I just stuck the picture down and then rubbed crayon (Caran d'Ache) all over the page.

And it really came alive when I brushed water onto the crayon and the colour lifted off the page.  Then, without knowing what I was going to put, I picked up a pen and wrote this!  I made myself laugh just looking at it, so was already talking myself out of my grumps.

And it just went from there.  My beloved had been in and out of my Studio - he could tell all wasn't well with me, but I didn't want to have to explain, I just wanted to get my head down and get on with it.  In a way the page is my explanation.

So I took the opportunity to get some stuff off my chest, and most definitely felt the better for it.  Some days thats what you need, right?  Plus it was an opportunity to laugh at myself for being cranky!

This page still makes me laugh when I look at it, so I can't stay grumpy for long when I read it.  Perhaps everyone should have a page in their journal which can do this - just to talk themselves out of the glums ....?