finis y gracias

i finally finished the journal i've been working in since october (this was the beginning)... i took it to texas thinking i'd finish it there, but nope...

these are the last pages, the ones i've done since i've been back...








these letter stamps are gorgeous wooden stamps from karin... they were in the package with her book (which arrived about two weeks ago. i'm workin' on it... : ).


this is the background before i put the letters on. in case you're interested, it's a quick and easy way to get a grungy background... all i did was paint watercolor paint randomly over the page, let it dry and then cover it all up with acrylic (i used off-white here). when the acrylic was about half dry i took masking tape and picked up some of the paint with it, then i stuck the used tape on the page. some of the watercolor bleeds through the acrylic (even though it was dry when i put the acrylic on), and between that and the masking-tape-picking-up-paint thing, you get a funky distressed look. i got the idea for using masking tape from susan tuttle's "exhibition 36: mixed media explorations...", the rest was the result of painting over a watercolor painting i didn't like!


originally a bird from an old calendar was glued down here (the silhouette)... painting over the whole page (bird included) because i didn't like it, i realized that the bird would come off! so i took it off and this is what was left behind... i used the bird again on the next page -- this time intentionally as a mask!


i know, latin and spanish... terminado sounded, well, a little harsh...


besides finishing my journal and starting in my collaborative 'karin journal' (you can see what she's done in my book here), i've been fooling around more with stencils.


i'm doing a set of 'i know', 'i see', 'i remember' (etc.) pieces...


i'm using arches 90# hot press that i had laying around... these pieces are about 4" x 9".


'i remember' goes on here somewhere...


i found these little by little last week... they're obsidian, and how on earth they got so rounded is beyond me. i suppose they've been tumbled somehow, but considering how easily obsidian fractures and breaks, i can hardly imagine it. i found them all in one small area... some are mahogany obsidian, some are black, and some are gray...


lichen... oh how i love lichen!


new poplar leaves... heavily aromatic, like an exotic spice...


the shasta lilies are starting to come up... as i was looking at them i decided to examine last year's seed pods, and wow... look at those seeds in there.


this long flower stalk shot out of the spider plant this week -- it's almost two feet long *before* it gets to the part where the flowers are! it seemed to appear instantaneously!


that's my new journal on the footstool... um hmm...

(whew! that was a lot of pics!)


XO