The Evolution of a Journal Page

I started this page in a Massachusetts workshop on May 6th. At the time, I was really happy with it. 

It helped me to get across what I was teaching and it served its purpose. 

At the time, I had been working in another journal and using this book to demo in as I taught in my workshops across the country. I prefer to work one book at a time. When I was finally ready to finish the work I had started in this journal, this page didn't fit with what the book had become.

I tried to rework it with paint but nothing clicked. I finally ended up gluing down this image and painting white and black acrylic over parts of the page:

I let the acrylics dry. I added red, neon pink and a dark blue on top. 

I added more layers of acrylic  (I forgot to take a photo of just those layers.) Then I thought about adding more collage elements but didn't:

Using photos of dried roses turned in different directions, I painted (not stenciled) the roses on either side of the image:

I liked it better but something was still missing.

For a few months now, I have been using cardstock as a palette and scraping off the unused paint. It takes a few weeks, lots of unused paint and scraping. In the end, you have layers of acrylic on a page (my friends, Pnina and Michelle in San Diego gave me the idea as they use canvas as a palette.) I recently decided to start using an old idea of a collaged book as a paint palette.

I had squeezed out four colors and then ended up not using them. I went to wipe them away with the palette knife before they dried and I LOVED how it looked.

Eureka!

My breakthrough moment! This is the look I had been after:

I took the palette knife and the same colors and started scraping the colors onto the journal page. I let the colors dry.

Later, I added journaling and then Pollock type paint splatters done by tapping juicy paint markers with my fingers:

I have one more thing to do with this page but am letting it stew for right now. 

I don't like to give up on my pages nor do I tear them out. I was ready to just turn the page several times but I fought with it and really pushed myself. It took several days and lots of, "walking away from the page time."

Thanks for coming along with me on the journey.