1000 Journal Pages by Dawn Sokol has entranced me! There's just so much to see, and I would love to fondle many of the pages personally! If you need a dose of inspiration, run, don't walk to get a copy. It's worth every single penny! I've spent hours with this book and have only begun to scratch its surface. It gave me a much needed kick start to begin journaling again, and ideas just whirl in my head! Out came the atlas journal, the paints, the stencils, the stamps, and the ephemera.
Now, I have a ton of stuff in my art room, more than the average bear! (Does that date me or what?) This journal and I are beginning to work in sync. My wonderful little moleskine allows me to just spit out the pages: 1, 2, 3! This baby is so big, that all the boundries shift, and I've been forced to slow down. Which is good - I'm pushing the walls of my comfort zone.
At any rate, I had a definite idea in my head, one that involved stencils and spray paint. I had prepped that page earlier with old dictionary pages torn into bits, and then several layers of paint over all of that. Digging through the box of stencils, it quickly became apparent that what danced in my head did not reside in that box. To cap it all off, thunder boomed and the rain poured down. I whined, muttered, and moaned, none of which produced the "right" stencil or stopped the heavens. I finally pulled out what you see in yellow, took a make up sponge, and dabbed carefully! Pretty cool! Flip the stencil, repeat on the opposite page, and pretty cool! Add a yellow border dabbing with the same sponge. Even better.
Now, a madonna also resided in my head. Images of madonnas could be found in my stash, but they were tiny as could be, and the page would simply swallow them. Okay, what do I have that's big? Oh, yeah, the "blue dog!" About as far from a madonna as you can get, but hey, I like him on this page. Then, I found a postcard I'd made for a swap, and voila, I had a page!
I then journaled my little heart out. Lesson for me? I have more than enough in my stash. (Which doesn't stop me from wanting one of Kelly Kilmer's bags...I just can't afford it at the moment. Sigh. Really really big sigh. You see her paper packets are just awesome!!!! Maybe she'll still have one on payday. A girl can hope.)
No the page in my head - nowhere near the page in my head. You'd think I'd have learned that lesson by now. Using what I have pushes me a bit. I've often not started a page because I didn't have the right stuff for what I wanted to do. I just need to forget that stuff, and work with the stuff I have! That stuff makes for some pretty cool art!