I did not have any texture paste, so for me that was an issue as I began this challenge. However, I discovered that you can do an internet search and find how to make your own...so I did! Granted, my homemade version might not have been as great as the purchased product, but it did the job that I needed it to do. I also did not have gesso, but again you can find out how to make your own online! And one thing that I discovered was that if you just keep adding a bit of water to the homemade texture paste, you end up with gesso! I now have a pasta sauce jar that contains gesso because I ended up watering all of my texture paste down too much! Live and learn, right?
From the prompts that were given, I chose the word "hope" and I began to brainstorm what I could create to go with the word "hope". Ultimately, there was a lot of things that I COULD have done, and there are a lot of quotes that I could have used, but I didn't. The more I thought about the word "hope", the more I began being reminded of times in my life when that simple little word meant so much. And I began to think about all the people in the world who daily lose all of their hope and make often catastrophic choices because of that. THIS is the page I made.
I think that the message in that piece of art speaks volumes. I live with depression and anxiety, and I have for many years. And I'd love to say that I'm someone who has NEVER contemplated suicide, but that would be a lie. Once, I did come close to going through with that. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. My boys were little, very little, my oldest son was 2 and my youngest son was under a year old. My husband was gone for the day with his father and the "demons" in my mind had convinced me that my precious little angels would be better off without me. So, I gave them both a bubble bath and watched as they played, laughed, and splashed in the water. I sat in my bathroom with them, trying my best to fake a smile as I watched them playing but all I could do was cry. I knew at that point that they would not remember me, and I had gotten convinced that they would be better off not knowing me. *Great, now I'm sitting at my PC in tears because this memory is so very vivid* I wanted to lock an image of my angels happy and playing into my mind...I wanted THAT image to be the last thing I pictured when I closed my eyes for the last time. I had gotten a sitter for my boys, and after I got them both dressed in my favorite outfits for them, I walked them over to the sitter with an over stuffed diaper bag. I didn't want to give anyone an excuse to have to come to my house before my husband got home...and by then, it would be too late. BUT, as I put my youngest son down and talked with the sitter (it was a family member), I saw my youngest son begin playing in their floor and it made me pause (like a semicolon pauses a sentence). And then my little angel looked up at me and flashed me the biggest smile that I had ever seen, and that made me pause even longer. I wanted that image fixed into my mind as well. I'm really glad now that I paused as long as I did because another family member came running out of a bedroom of that house screaming, "Don't let her leave, she's going to kill herself". I don't know HOW they knew, I really don't, but I'm glad that they did and that I was stopped because I would have missed out on some absolutely amazing things.
I want to make a point here, IF you are reading this blog and you are where I was at then, let me tell you PLEASE GET HELP! There is NOTHING that is worth taking your life because of...nothing...not depression, anxiety, poverty, the loss of a friend or loved one, the end of a relationship...nothing. If you don't have a trusted friend or family member that you can talk to then find SOMEONE, ANYONE that will listen. A good place to start is National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741. Please take this moment to PAUSE your plans...and keep pausing until you can get through the crisis you're going through or you can get professional help.
Now to talk about the process of how this page was made. Let me also apologize for not taking enough pictures, but I got so wrapped up in creating that I forgot to snap some of the process pictures.
Here is steps 1 and 2. I used blue tissue paper, scrapbooking paper scraps, ledger paper scraps, a coffee filter, and bits of denim for my first texture. After that, I put my homemade texture paste through a "stencil" that was actually a strainer bowl from a microwave meal.
Here are steps 3-5. I chose a blue paint as opposed to gesso, then I lightened it by mixing it with white paint and thinned it out with a bit of water. As for my focal image, originally she was wearing a black and white dress but I wanted to alter that so I colored over it with Bic Mark It pens in yellow and green. I then added the tear drop to her eye and the semicolon "tattoo" on her wrist. The text was all from magazines. I found the word "hope" and then built the rest of the statement with individual letters, sort of like a ransom note. The hand journaling was originally done with a Bic pen.
And once again, here is the finished page which is steps 6-8, and I went over the original writing with a Sharpie Fine Point because it just didn't show up like I wanted. The border that I chose is just a green scrap of scrapbooking paper that I had in my stash. Since I do not own any washi tape, I used scraps of scrapbooking paper to make paper strips. I opted to make marks with paint as opposed to splatters because I didn't want to accidently splatter my focal image or my text.
So, if this looks like something that you think you might enjoy, then head on over to the Facebook group and join us or watch some of the "Mission Inspiration" videos by Mike Deakin on YouTube.
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