An Artful Journey: Day 3, With a Little Luck

After a dreary day Friday, we got a little sunshine on Saturday. I shared lots of flower pictures with you on Day 1, but each day I was more amazed at the landscape around the center. Those mountains are just magical. Even in sunny Florida, my flowers had all died, but look at this little beauty. They seem to have really temperate weather here in this area. Seems like the perfect climate!
Day 3 was a turning point for me. Thankfully, this little four leaf clover appeared in my hand because I really needed it! In the morning, DJ demonstrated her photo painting technique. She made it look so easy, but I still had that nagging fear that I was not going to be able to do it. I’m just not comfortable with a paint brush for some reason. I prefer to move paint around with my fingers! I started working on one and then another and just wasn’t happy with either one. I talked with DJ about it, and she encouraged me and just suggested that I work on the rest of my pages in the meantime and she’d help me with my painting first thing Sunday morning. The painting was to be the cover of our book.
After lunch that four leaf clover popped up, and I had a light bulb moment. No, I wasn’t really comfortable with a paint brush, but I loved my water soluble crayons and pencils! I thought about that and went in a totally different direction. Away went the detail paint brushes and out came the crayons! I was so glad I brought them! The focus was this page is actually a photograph that I altered. It’s a Boca Grande sunset that I took my water soluble crayons to! I added a little bit of molding paste around it (love that stuff!) to blend it in and scribbled in it some for kicks. From that point, I really took off and everything started coming together, so much so that I didn’t want to stop! I was a woman on a mission! Thankfully, so was Leah, and the two of us stayed up working on our books until 12:30am! I think we were punch drunk by the end of the night, but we had such a great time together. I finished all the collage and stamp work on my tissue paper pages and my molding paste pages Saturday night.
This page has several bits of significance worked in. The background is one of my molding paste collage pages, and I just really didn’t care for it. Leah took a look at it and give me a couple ideas that we then worked through together. The red strip was her idea and it really lit up the page. The fabric here is also meaningful. One the new friends I made there is Ann. After dinner on Saturday, Ann, Davi, Dorothy and I walked around to each other’s classes and shared our work. It was so fun to see what everyone else was doing! Ann gave me that scrap of fabric and asked me to include it in my book. Leah and I had the same light bulb go off at the same moment to sew it in and make pockets. I still need to do something with those tags in the pockets, and I’m planning to do something in honor of Ann and Leah on them.
This page is also special. The “Life Unscripted” tag on the bottom is from Davielle Huffman, my apron swap pal. She signed it on the back. As I mentioned yesterday, I also have some rickrack in my book from Davi and a cool card as well. I just adore her. We hooked up prior to the retreat on Facebook and really clicked. She is so sweet and I really wanted to include a couple pieces of her in my book! The paper collage strips were done with some of Albie’s papers I bought at vendor night.
And last for today, here’s another of my molding paste pages. I just love the colors on this one. I use aqua and brown combos in my jewelry designs a lot as well and love them together. This page is definitely perfect for some journaling!

Stay tuned for tomorrow! Day 4 is dancing on the tables day!