November 2018 - Open The Door

November 30, 2018

November 2018 - Open The Door - by DeeDee Catron

Hello Art Journalers - DeeDee here today & I am super stoked to be sharing some art journaling with you in Finn's new adventure! I love art journaling... it speaks wonders to my soul & gives me the most amazing opportunity to explore new ideas & techniques without NEEDING a finished, polished piece. Along those same lines I decided to stretch my artsy palette a little bit & so I started by cutting one of Finn's new journals directly in half. IN. HALF.

When open it's either a super tall skinny spread or a super short super long spread. It will (& certainly does) stretch my skills in filling such a space.

My first spread brings us back to that beautiful inspiration card from Week 1 : You open the DOOR : What's behind it?

My answer : Whatever you want there to be.

For me art journaling REALLY is about experimenting, playing, testing things out. Build new layers, use new tools, use old layers & tools in new ways. Just DO. So when Finn asked me to be a part of this new Art DAILY exercise, I knew I had to be in! & now this page is my permission to go all out, to not worry about creating beautiful pieces, but to hone my abilities and allow myself to learn through the creation process rather than aim for a final product.

I used Finn's card as an inclusion that mimics a door by mounting it to a gelli print. It's been sewn to the page & opens to reveal my new found permission to play. The background is a collage of fodder from my stash. The stash is made up of gelli prints, underpaper, vintage texts, and more. It's a stack of goodies I keep on hand to jumpstart my creativity.

There are lots of painty layers, ink, collage bits, stitching, sketching & mark making, too. The focal pint of my spread is a layer of my favorite lace, some UmWowStudio chip with white Sharpie and the sentiment I pieced together from vintage text. I stapled the sentiment to the page with a Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.

I really just had fun layering things up & working in layers with a new order of application. Give yourself permission to play, to open the door & don't be afraid to MAKE what's on the other side work for you.