Today: Get Messy Thursdays | Adventure, Week 2

This week’s prompt for the Get Messy Art Journal challenge has been, appropriately, an adventure.  We’ve received a new instruction each morning from Vanessa, and while I’ve never worked this way (and let’s be honest… I always loathed group projects), it’s been quite fun.

Materials used: Another page from Combray, Golden fluid acrylic paint in Maganese Blue Hue (applied with a palette knife), black ink in a tiny spray bottle thing (I am impatient and moved it across the page a bit by blowing through a straw), clear stamp from Studio Calico with black StazOn ink.

I used a page from Combray for an earlier prompt, and figured… why not rip out another page?  This one has more of my notes from college scribbled in the margins and lots of underlining.  I can’t help but wonder why the H. I underlined the lines and passages I did.  Like, part of me thinks I was underlining random things just to stay awake.  No offense to Proust… except, kind of offense to Proust.  I was never a fan.  (Also I can’t think of Proust without quoting all of Steve Carrell’s lines from Little Miss Sunshine.

• Sheryl: Who’s Larry Sugarman?
• Frank: Probably the second highest regarded Proust scholar in the US.
• Richard: Who’s number 1?
• Frank: That would be me Rich.
• Richard: Really?

Still, I’m glad I hung on to some of those books.  I’ve been reading more in French lately (mostly the news), which seems like a good way to keep the ol’ brain challenged now that it’s not responsible for running an organization and office.  A better use would likely be remembering ordinary tasks, such as walking Clark and moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer.  

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing how this page wraps up.   You can see what the rest of the group’s pages look like by checking out the #getmessygame hashtag on Instagram.  And for even more pages from the rest of the Get Messy Thursdays crew, you can find a full list of participants here.

Materials used: [Left side] Sakura watercolor paint (from this travel sketch box), black gesso, white vinyl mailbox letters, extremely tacky gold puffy stick-on letters [Right side] Black and pink watercolor paint, Sakura white gel pen, black micron pen 

True Life: Art journaling has revived my adolescent love of quotes.  But where did we find all those quotes before the Internet?  (Wait… Chicken Soup for the Soul… bahahaha) Trip down memory lane aside, I really like this quote.  And I really like how this side of the page (white on black!) turned out.  

The other side: not so much.  I ran out of mailbox letters and decided to make use of the puffy gold alphabet stickers I found in the dollar section at Target a while back.  As with all Dollar Spot items, these stickers could have been sort of fun/irreverent/quirky or OHMYWORDTHATISTACKY.  Unfortunately, in this case, ’twas the latter.  I will likely swap them out for white letters, and perhaps mail them to one of the RHONJ.  

Materials used: Watercolor paints, Faber Castell Pitt pen (XS), magazine cut outs, a plain old glue stick.

My last little project this week has nothing to do with adventure (I was going to make up some sort of connection, but got lazy).  I was inspired by a color of emotions chart I recently came across… and Whitney Houston (she continues to dominate my go-to Spotify playlist).  I get so emotional, baby, every time I… cut images of floral arrangements out of House Beautiful.  Or whatever.

Also On Tap for Today:

• Interesting read: Why writing by hand helps you learn via World Economic Forum
• Creating my own Real Housewives franchise (me + Clark taking about our favorite weather apps while Grace colors directly on the glass coffee table)
• 15 essential ingredients for vegan and vegetarian pantries via The Kitchn

What are you listening to right now? (Don’t hold back.  I need jams!).