Life Book recap: Celebration & Journey

Each month in my Life Book class has its own theme and January’s theme was Celebration & Journey. All five weeks’ lessons fell under this overarching theme. I am enjoying this course so very much! It’s fun to know that a new lesson will be in my inbox every Sunday evening for the entire year and that I’ll be learning new drawing or doodling techniques each week.

I showed you my fairy art mother and also our first assignment already, which is a drawing combined with collage symbolizing the journey ahead. I haven’t given you any process photos yet though, and I know some of you love to see the creation steps behind the finished product.

With any new class, there’s always the hope necessity of buying gorgeous new art supplies. Right out of the gate, I needed these Letraset watercolor markers, watercolor crayons and pencils, and paper. (I also just love how Tamara Laporte says “woh-tah-colah.” She’s from down under.)

I created the background, sprinkled table salt over it, let it dry, and rubbed off the salt. I sketched my design and used watercolor crayons activated by water.

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Week 2: “True Intentions” bonus lesson by Monica Zuniga. We played with stamps to make a paper doll symbolizing our true intentions.

My favorite part of this is her skirt and shoes. I did my best to copy artwork from a magazine.

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Christy Tomlinson taught Week 3′s “New Blooms,” where we built a flower collage with paints, pastes, foil, and layers.

The background is a mix of stamps, papers (I thought it was appropriate to use my favorite Christy T paper), washi tape, and writing.
To make the flowers, we used tissue paper sprayed with paint through a stencil. Then I cut them into circles and used mod podge to attach foil to their backs.

This is my favorite tissue paper, made by 7 Gypsies. I stamped over it and decorated it with colorful gelatos.

I cut the flower petals and hot glued them onto the background.

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Dion Dior taught Week 4: Scales of Light. The light scales “represent the beginning of our journey, like a roadmap, and are our own unique pattern of inner light to be used as a beacon to help guide us over the coming months.”

The idea is to create focus toward one area and fade it out to nothingness; sort of a symbolic destination.

I used a white oil pastel. Since I didn’t have black paper, I painted black gesso onto a white piece.

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In Week 5, we made a Game Board with Kelly Hoernig. She wanted us to choose one word (I chose “create“) and a “game piece” (the colorful markers).

First Kelly had us list what we want to focus on this year (learning new techniques, playing, creating). Then we listed challenges that come up that keep us from doing those (schedules, little hands interfering with my artwork).

We sprayed the background through stencils, added some paper, then laid out the game path.

I think this is super cool… used a paper towel over wet paint layers to create texture.

To create our cards, we gesso’d over actual Bicycle playing cards on both sides, let them dry, then used bubble wrap and paints to add some dimension. The other side of the cards have more detail about the goals. They fit into the little pocket at the bottom of the game board.

So that’s our January Life Book update! Maybe it won’t take me quite this long to get to a February update.