Art Journal Advent Calendar (Days 7-12)

 

I want to begin by saying that in case you don't hear from me today or tomorrow, it is because I have no electricity.  We have electrical outage warnings due to high winds.  They are supposed to be sustained at 50 mph, with gusts that could reach up to 80 mph.  These are straight line winds, but could be as severe as tornadic winds.  My electricity company is on standby and will be repairing downed lines as soon as it is safe for the employees to be in those buckets that are needed to repair the lines.  I just want you to know before it gets too late to let everyone know.

Now lets join Michelle of RaspberryBlueSky and Tamara of MaraKreativStudio as they work on their Art Journal Advent Calendar.  They are on Instagram, but since I am not, I will only be showing my advent calendar here.

Day 7's prompt was Take a short break.  I sat on my front porch listening to Pink Floyd and looked for faces in the clouds.  The background is cloud scrapbook paper and the music refers to Dark Side of the Moon, one of Pink Floyd's classic hits and albums.

Day 8's prompt is Fulfillment.  I'm fulfilling my desire to be a mixed media artist.  The word DAY was stickers, the bottom layer was wallpaper, then left over scrapbook paper from Day 4, dyed (by me) ribbon, a tag from something I purchased from Westinghouse, and cat washi tape.  Note December 8 was actually created on December 8.

Day 9's prompt was Boundaries.  It was the hardest page to try to photograph because of the silver stripes that reflected everything.  The black you see

is my camera reflecting the paper, which is gift wrap.  When I saw that prompt, my mind immediately went to sports.  As you might be able to read:

When you carry or throw a football out of bounds, you stop the clock.
When you carry or throw a basketball out of bounds, you cause a turnover.

In sports, different boundaries result in different outcomes.

Day 10's prompt was Inner Strength.  The background is a piece of beautiful batik fabric.  I chose it for the colors.  I like to believe my inner strength will some day guide me to be a good mixed media and collage artist.  Although the fabric was glued to the page, all the paper pieces were stapled together.

Day 11's prompt is Free Spirited Soul.

This caused some reflection on my part.  I decided the background had to include a nature theme.  I had this flashcard in my stash, so I crumpled it and ran my dirtyhands on it.  I'm not sure why, but I thought it looked too stark and pristine when I laid it on the background.  Another thing I found in my stash was this angel, to which I added the butterfly sticker.  I had been playing with a paint chip sample that I outlined in black ink and added some old powder makeup my enabler friend Sally had just given me.  I thought it went well with the rest of the page, to which I also wrote the day's prompt in blue ink to match the blue in the flashcard.

Day 12's prompt was Dreams that give you strength.  Somehow, I thought this was quite philosophical.  At the least it was abstract, at most it was esoteric.  I decided to grab as many disparate bits and pieces from my stash as I could find, then added the rocking horse sticker.  However, I finally found the words I was hoping for.

Dream only Good Dreams! brought it all together.

Thank you for joining me today as I shared my next six Art Journal Advent pages.