Jens Arty Life

I'm not that keen on the colours of this page. But I have to accept that I won't love all my pages. I wanted a sand and sea type colour scheme - which is there, it's just not as harmonious as I would like. The round circles are cut from my first ever Gelli Prints down with my new Gelli plate. It was my birthday present and I'm loving using it. These are just the first few efforts, and the ones I did last night are nicer. They will probably appear in later pages. Now that I look at it ... I think the reason I'm not in love with this page is that the sandy colour is very flat. It might have looked better if I had used some textures and layered it up a bit with some stamps or stencils. I was just so excited about using those Gelli prints that I rushed it I think. Not to worry ... we live and learn.

Almost as soon as I had finished my last page with the face of a girl, I wanted to do another one. But I wanted a smaller face and some body. This is what happened. I feel like I really need to work on my eyes and noses ... but I guess it will come. She kind of surprised me how she kept developing. I used a base of acrylic paint and then added watercolour pencil, some of which I diluted and some was left. Once the basics of the angel were done I used Gesso on both pages and started layering. I wanted a fairly soft, uncomplicated  look to the page, so I didn't over do the layers. The letters of ANGEL were stamped in black ink. It's not that obvious in this photo, but I added some little sparkle embellishments, gold and red stars and a diamonte on the heart. She is helping me hold my heart because sometimes it gets heavy. Thanks again so much to Brenda and her blog party. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my page. Jennidee

My one word for this year is 'Allow'. I have spent a lot of my life anxious and worried because I am so afraid of bad outcomes. Now I am going to allow them to happen (because they happen sometimes whether I worry about them or not, and sometimes they don't happen). I spend a lot of time worrying if my work is good enough to be seen ... good enough to catch people's attention, good enough to sell. That will no longer be my focus. Allowing for myself to be imperfect or fail does not mean that I stop trying. It means that I try for different reasons. I try because I enjoy the process, I enjoy developing skills and getting better, I enjoy seeing improvement and when there is no improvement I just enjoy moving paint and colour around. So I created this page; It's the fifth page in my journal. I had already created the background and I just wrote over it this morning. I'd been keeping the page for something meaningful about starting the year. Thank ...