Little Blue Boxes for You and Me - DLP Week 4

Hello :)

Today I have my The Documented Life Project page for week #4 to share. The challenge for this week was 'writing' and the prompt was 'words with friends'. As I was thinking about this topic it occurred to me I never write anything, besides maybe notes or a list, and I rarely talk to anyone either. Most of my communication these days is via texting. All my friends and family have smart phones and so information is shared via these little snippets of text. Sometimes this is a blessing (teenage boys will actually text) and sometimes this is a curse (it is very time consuming to hold a meaningful conversation) As the song by John Cougar, Little Pink Houses, was playing on the radio I could imagine the days when everyone lived in a neighborhood. They wrote letters and cards to each other. They sat on their porches drinking sweet tea and chatting. SO DIFFERENT from my life now! I decided to make my page layout about my modern life of communication. I used a twist on the song lyrics for my title and typed it in the same font as Iphone uses for texting (Helvectica Neue for those wondering)


To start off I put some different acrylic paints in shades of blue and some white on my pallet. I used a flat dry brush and painted 'boxes' not cleaning the brush in between changing colors.


While that was drying I drew a figuree on a separate page of mixed media paper. She has her head down and a phone in her hand like you see everywhere these days. I painted her with water soluble crayons blended with acrylic paint.


Next I cut out my figure and my title in its little blue box and attached them to the page with matte gel medium.


This is where things went haywire! I decided I wanted to use some random friendship script type stamps all over the background...but I was too lazy to use acrylic paint and a sponge. So I thought..I will just use my white pigment ink pad. So I juiced it up and went to town stamping all over...but...it wouldn't dry and was all smeary :(  Well... I should have known this (DUH) acrylic paint is basically plastic..and pigment ink takes forever to dry on regular absorbent material. Over plastic it may NEVER dry. My fix was to take it outside and spray the whole page with clear acrylic sealer.


Once the sealer was dry, I used a left over from some die cutting to stencil with some white gesso and a stencil brush. Then I added a flower in the blank space (because of the stamped saying right there about friends being like flowers)


I painted the flower with gesso first before adding in color with my new Intense Blocks...which I used with a wet brush. Love how vibrant those are! Finally I finished up with some tiny flowers stamped in orange acrylic and some orange spatters made by running a brush over the Inktense block...a very cool way to spatter! And of course the usual...the white Sakura gel pen! My favorite :)


I hope you get some inspiration from my pages.
<3 Shel

Comments

  1. Awesome. You are right about communication these days. C

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    1. Thanks for visiting! Glad you enjoyed my page and message :)

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  2. Lovely spread, Shel and I very much like all the thought behind it.

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  3. Love what you did- funny I was singing the tune after reading the words,before reading the post- great minds? gorgeous background Shel- glad you did not clean in between colors- everything melded so well! ")

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    1. Thanks Jackie for stopping by and giving a comment :) I liked the background too but was worried it would over power the lil person..til I put in the orange then BAM..it leveled out lol.

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  4. Amazing how much detail and work you put into each of your journal pages, Shel! This looks fantastic and I really enjoyed seeing the whole process in the photos.

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    1. Thank you Zsuzsa. I do like to draw the realistic figures better then the whimsical ones I think. Just trying to develop a style that is uniquely mine I guess :)

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  5. I am always amazed at how 'brave' you are about fixing a mistake...and the creative ways you solve the problem. Very nice illustration of the message you want to portray. Love your purple smart phone...looks familiar. :)

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    1. Thanks so much for visiting. Yes, the phone is familar isn't it lol

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  6. Great save! Your sketch tells the story of words with friends in 2015...she is so engrossed. Thanks for sharing your process

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Linda :) I see sooooo many people just everywhere looking at their phones just like that. Even if they are with other people in a social setting..lol Not sure what it all means...just making a comment in the world.

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