Contaminated Creativity Journal Page

Hi everyone,

I was watching France Papillon’s Facebook live stream a couple of days ago and something she talked about really resonated with me. She spoke about contaminated creativity..... in essence when we start out art journaling, or simply watching other artists creating, it’s not unusual to practise their techniques and copy their art BUT we need to be careful that doing that stops us from moving on and evolving. That it’s easy to get trapped in the habit and not find or fly with our own creativity.

France’s words made me realise that I have to hold my hands up..... I have learnt journaling  by watching the million and one YouTube video tutorials out there and if there’s a been a journal page or tag that has caught my eye then I’ve had a go at recreating it. I’m kinda all right with that because I think that the videos are a fantastic resource and a great way to learn but, as France mentioned, I need to be careful not to contaminate my creativity as a result.

I wanted to make a journal page to remind me of this so since watching France I’ve been working away at a page and this is the result......

 I started out with a piece of 140gsm watercolour card cut to 15 x 19 cm, then using Archival ink (potting soil) and one of France's Stampotique stamps (crazed 602.862.0237) I set to to creat my background.

 

For my wings I used a Crafters Workshop mini stencil (angel wings) and PaperArtsy Grunge Paste.

I left the paste to air dry over night and this was the result......

I stitched around the edges on my sewing machine and then carefully masked off the wings before setting to with Ranger Distress Oxide Ink (fossilised amber) and Distress Inks (vintage photo, walnut stain) to create my drippage from the top of the page and edges.

Using the same Distress Inks I built up colour on the wings until I was happy with the look, then added a touch of shadow using a charcoal pencil, smudging as I went with both my finger and a stubby blender.

I picked up the steer's head at a craft event earlier this year and decided to use it to give a slight sinister feel to the page. It's horns fitted perfectly with  the curve of the wings I created with the grunge paste. To mute the shiny silver I painted the skull with black acrylic paint, waited until it was almost dry then buffed it off with a dry paper towel.

I set black eyelets along the top and bottom of the wings and threaded through strands of black cotton to symbolise the wings being tethered down.  (I originally thought of burning holes rather than using eyelets but chickened.  In retrospect I should have gone with the burnt holes, they would have been subtler).  

To show contamination I hand drew the recognised icon, reduced it in size using my photocopier and then printed it on to white tissue paper.  

It never ceases to amaze me how tissue paper blends into a background when it is glued into place. I used Ranger Medium (matt) and then went carefully over the top of each image, when dry, with Glossy Accents.

To add a little more interest to the background I sprinkled generously with Art Ingredients Mini Art Stones (blanco) being careful to keep the drippage free of stones.

The 'creativity' labels were computer generated and backed with black card before being threaded through a couple of strands of black thread. I touched the back with Glossy Accents to secure each in place.

Finally I backed the page with black card and added my tiny date tag to the top RH corner.

This page is a 'little different' even for me but I quite like it nevertheless. Mind you it's gong to be a challenge fitting it in my moleskine art journal as the steer's skull makes it very chunky. Maybe I need to use it as an art journal cover to keep reminding myself of France's words and to keep challenging myself.

Thanks so much for stopping by and letting me share.

Happy crafting, 

Carol, xx