Life Book Weeks 39 – 41 | Visionary Art by Carmen Alicia

Life Book Week – From Here to There

with Roben Marie

This week’s lesson with Roben-Marie is all about finding connection with our wholeness again through the pages. Roben-Marie talks about the therapeutic aspects of journalling and shows us how to create a beautiful journal page from ‘here to there’!

Using watercolor paper I first made marks all over the page then started layering different media including stamps, stencils, pages from magazines, sheet music, and old book pages. I also made some of my own tools and applied them on the page. It is not as bright as Roben-Marie’s but I like it!

These are the closeups of this page:

This is the bird cage stamp I used and the bird is a paper I punched out with a circle punch

Some of the marks we did were circles with a paper towel tube

I used them to stencil in some flowers

This is part of a magazine I used and left the image inside the circle also

This shows some of the book papers I used to make circles and attached them to the page where I thought needed to be covered

Lastly, we made tags and put them inside a pocket I made using my sewing machine so it wouldn’t obstruct the page. By the way, Roben-Marie was making the tags along with each layer and I didn’t realize she would be using it for the journalling, but I went back and created three tags and will use them on other projects. The stamp I used is from Unity Stamps.

Week 40 – was an interview with Chris Zydel she teaches intuitive painting and mark making and her class is sometime in November – looking forward to trying it out!

Week 41 – Kristin Vanvalkenburgh

I found this lesson by Kristin to be very moving. It was a very therapeutic exercise. I got a little teary eyed when I was watching the first video because she shared some memories of when she was younger with us. So this exercise was about writing a letter to your younger self and be accepting of the future.

I enjoyed working on this lesson too, because I allowed myself to be free and not think too much about the process. One thing I did was use lighter colors and I really like the look.

This is the page I created using spray inks, acrylic paint, stencils, glitter and lots and lots of texture with gesso.

This is the heart I created with burlap using the circles stencil I made myself. I attached a piece of card stock to the back of the heart and sewed around the edges with a straight and zig-zag stitches so the burlap would not unravel. Since it’s a very personal message, I stapled it shut so no one else can read it but me!

Close up of all the texture I created using paper towel tubes, a comb and a plastic tool with a different edge on it.

I had never used glitter on top of spray inks before, but it looks like it adhered well. I applied mod podge juste to be sure the glitter would not come off everywhere.

Finally, the left hand side showing more glitter and more texture. This was so much fun, although, it did take me three days to complete. I am keeping these techniques for future projects of my own for sure!