Hi everyone, nice to be back with you again; Keren Baker here with you today.
This year on the blog, we have free reign to do a deep dive into a PaperArtsy product ranges of our choosing. For this post I have been exploring Alison Bomber's beautiful products.
Today I'm looking forward to sharing with you what I created as I was musing about knowing yourself. Deepak Chopra once said "Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance".
I decided to find a way of comparing the way that you feel, but doing so in such a manner that looked beautiful visually and helped you reflect month upon month. A recorded diary of emotion in a visceral form.
I love arranging flowers, and despite these being card based, Alison's art adds a realism to the piece; beauty in the emotion. The challenge was to find a simple way of recording, that also was a delight to look at.
I wanted to use Bellflower and Ladybug Mattints and the red and purple fitted in with the berries so it seemed only natural to use a secondary scheme plus adding in red. I didn't want to use brown or black which would have been the obvious 'negative' emotion colourings.
Planning consisted of thinking about how I could make it a year long record, and also having the ability of changing positions of where the colours lay on the piece, so it wasn't always static. I was lucky enough to have some 12x12 Smoothy Heavy, (PaperArtsy don't do this anymore but you might find a stockist somewhere with it), but any decent 12x12 white cardstock would suffice. Most of the painted elements were using A4 Smoothy Heavy cardstock.
I grabbed some equally spaced bowls and plates act as templates. Once cut out, I had to work out spacings.
I should probably have measured, but eyeballed for speed.
I did, however measure the centre points and make sure that the lettering was well spaced.
It did feel a little bare and I was concerned that there was too much negative space to fill.
Despite wanting to use more Mattints, only the Bellflower & Ladybug were going to work. I also added in Lawn. I stamped some in Black and others in Grey to add contrast.
I used some watercolour pens to add further colour and embellishment. The images from the EABF set really are stunning.
All of the lettering and numbers are from the Words 2 Ink and the Dog set.
Now I just needed to arrange everything and make sense of the original idea.
I tried to use most of the accompanying stamps in Alison's set. They added detail beautifully. I used the circular one to ground the central brad. I needed to have a brad to allow both removal of the top section to add another month's blank circles and also to allow shifting, to make it more appealing as the colours were added day by day.
The berries and foliage might look like they're adhered to the circles, but they're only affixed to the outer part to allow free-wheeling of the circles.
Adding in the dots does help lift the one dimensional nature of the painting and colouring.
I used Versafine Clair ink so using watercolours or watered down Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics wasn't an issue.
You can see some of the 'feelings' I chose. Feelings common to us all. You would daily consider 'what do I feel today...I am...'x'.'
It really is a riot of colour, despite a restricted palette. It just shows how colour theory works so beautifully.
I angled some of the elements upwards. I had considered how I might display this, and thought I could simply attach the back panel to the wall using Command Strips or similar.
I had thought it might be nice to change the colours for certain months, or to add a different background.
I do love the circular elements but having an octagonal or similar would be interesting. I've used a largescale design, but this could be replicated in a sturdy journal or on an A4 piece and bound together at the end of the year. Tracking emotions linked to hormones, or significant events would be interesting. You could also write on defining elements rather than just colour, or use the reverse to add more written detail.
It's a simple idea that could be adapted to anyone's style or life.
I hope you might be inspired to make a record of your life in a way that future generations might find appealing.
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