Journal page: Freedom

This is my first free weekend since January and I used my new-found freedom to make a journal page. I haven't made one in absolute ages and it felt so good to just let loose! I used my altered book and went berserk with collage and colours! This is the result of my abundant play:

Here's a list of some of the collage elements I used:

• palette paper (torn into pieces)
• printouts (left over from other projects and scrunched up for added texture)
• used postage stamps (distressed)
• used teabag
• die-cuts (butterflies and plants)
• washi tape (numbers)

I also included some lace pieces made with a silicone mould. These were just some experimental pieces lying on my desk that suited my project perfectly. One of them was made with gel medium, which I painted black and then accented with gold - the other is left-over black gesso with gold highlights. These moulds are marketed for cake decorating but they work just as well with acrylics to create amazing distressed textures for mixed media projects.

Another clever "hack" I discovered is a piece of plastic that I turned into a texture stamp. I was cooking dinner and was about to throw away the plastic chicken tray when the design on the bottom caught my eye. It looked like something Tim Holtz might have designed LOL! I cleaned it, cut it out and ran it through my Big Shot with a piece of foam and, voila, I got myself a fantastic new texture stamp!

Here's my page in more detail to show the individual elements:

I normally gesso my book pages before starting a new spread, but this time, I didn't. This resulted in some words from the underlying text being clearly visible. After taking these photos, I circled some of these words and thought about how they're relevant to my life. The words that jumped out at me were: gravity, gratitude and homelessness. Homelessness in particular made think about how I'm no longer Hungarian but I'll never be fully British either - culturally, I'm somewhere in-between the two and I'm not sure I will ever feel truly at home in either of my countries. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll have to be aware that I will always appear a bit alien to people in both cultures. 

Thank you for coming along on my art journey this Sunday!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! xx