DLP Week04: Words with friends

This week's challenge of  the Documented Life Project was to create something with writing with the prompt 'words with friends'.  I decided to do a page with the quote 'A friend's silence hurts more than an enemy's harsh words' because I find this to be very true.

I started my page with three different Gelatos (bubblegum pink, mango and lemon) which I blended with my fingers directly on the paper with a tiny bit of gesso. The gesso helped move the pigments easier and also toned downed the brightness of the colours and made the Gelatos a bit more permanent.

Bubblegum pink, mango and lemon Gelatos blended with gesso 

Next, I added some texture paste (extra-fine Polyfilla aka joint compound from the DIY store) through a Crafter's Workshop stencil and let it dry thoroughly.  The Polyfilla, unlike most other texture pastes dries almost instantly and produces fantastic results, as you can see below.

Stenciling with extra-fine Polyfilla (joint compound)

 

I tore some words out of an old dictionary, which I thought matched my sentiment: friend, understand, support, loyal and stuck them on my layout after inking the edges with dark grey archival ink. Much as I hate my own handwriting, I wrote my sentiment on a piece of torn paper for the sake of the challenge and inked the edges the same way. As a finishing touch, I splattered Payne's Grey acrylic paint over the page to grunge it up a bit, reminiscent of a tarnished friendship, where a friend fails to be supportive. Here's my final page. Perhaps it's not my most brilliant project to date, but I find it quite meaningful and expressive.

The page without the splatters

The final page with the paint splatters