Good evening!
I am a little bit late in getting this post published, but better late than never!
Today I am very happy to be sharing my process video for an art journal spread that I have recently done in my 2018 Soul Book.
The inspiration for this spread was that I have a song that means a lot to me this year that I wanted to document and remember. That song is called Life Uncommon, which was written and performed by Jewel.
The words to Life Uncommon are:
It’ll be alright
And don’t worry sister
Say your prayers and sleep tight
Lover of mine
It’ll be just fine
To sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength
To that which you wish
To be free from
Fill your lives
With love and bravery
And you shall lead
A life uncommon
I’ve heard your hearts cry out
We are tired, we are weary
But we aren’t worn out
Set down your chains
Until only faith remains
Set down your chains
Who pray for peace
But if praying were enough
It would’ve come to be
Let your words enslave no one
And the heavens will hush themselves
To hear our voices ring our clear
With sounds of freedom
Sounds of freedom
Move out of the way
There is a new army coming
And we are armed with faith
To live, we must give
To live
Isn’t that just lovely? It seriously is one of my faves and has been floating around in my head for months! I just knew that I wanted to put the lyrics to this song in my Soul Book, but thought I would first decorate a background and just paste the music on top of the background.
Well, I gave myself permission to put some music on and just play, and before I knew it I was on a creative-mojo-filled-roll!! I love when that happens!! Anyway, before I knew it there was no way I was going to let myself cover up the abstract painting I was doing. The colors were different than anything else I would have ever put together, but I L-O-V-E-D it!!! So, I had to come up with some kind of solution as to where I was going to put my song lyrics. The simple solution popped into my mind, and that was to create a pocket out of the 2nd page of my spread and the following blank page. That combined with some double-sided sticky tape, and viola!! It worked beautifully!!
I ended up mounting the song, that I had printed onto plain printer paper onto opposite sides of a nice piece of water color paper, and that gave the song some heft, and kind of turned it into a gigantic tag – perfect for the new pocket that I had created!
I finished by doing a bunch of doodling on the spread, as well as doing some journaling with a white pen. I did that part after the video because I thought for sure that I was done, but later, when I went back to look at my spread again with new eyes, I just knew what I wanted to say on this spread, and instead of doing a tip-in or anything, I decided to write it out!! I wrote from top to bottom on the right hand page, and then flipped the whole thing over so that the writing is upside down on the left hand side – I thought that was a fancy shmanzy way to do that, and I love they that it turned out.
The materials I used:
- Dina Wakley heavy body acrylic paints: Ruby, Blackberry Violet, Ocean, and Tangerine
- Liquitex heavy body acrylic paint: Titanium White
- An old hotel key card (for scraping my paint in a thin layer on the background)
- Dina Wakley paint brushes: 1 inch, a small round brush
- UHU glue stick
- a small Uni Posca Paint pen: Black
- Double-sided construction tape (a gift from my sweetie)
- My Fiskars precision paper cutter
- Scissors
- StazOn permanent ink pad: Jet Black
- Date stamp
- Bic black doodling pen
- Construction pencil from Lowes
- Uni-ball Signo Broad: white
- Small white paper plate for my paint palette
- Song printed on 2 sheets of regular white printer paper
- 1 sheet of thick watercolor paper
I hope you enjoyed watching this process, and more importantly, I hope that you are inspired to to maybe do a similar kind of art journal spread in your own Soul Book!
As always, if you have any questions, please let me know down in the comments section, I am always happy to be of help! Also, please let me know if you do decide to do a spread like this, what song would you choose to use?
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Now it is your turn to get creating!
Here is to having some fun!
