Smashing Therapy

Ahhh, therapy. So last week, I started an art journal/smash journal. I'm not certain whether it's one or the other or just a bit of both. I try to use up little scaps of stuff and left over bits that I don't want to throw out but don't fit into any other projects I'm doing. So here's a photo or two of one of the pages I've completed. Fairy Garden.

I've used leftover fairy and butterfly stickers, along with rubber stamps of images I love. The background was the distress ink background I've been so excited to try out (and now I will be using it ALL the time! Just because I love it!) I focused on greens but brown creeped in and a touch of a strange purple ink pad that had no name. Scraps of paper that had been in my Scrap File for a while that seemed to fit in were used and a brown paper tape from Creative Memories that I happened across while looking for something else. The glitter flower at the top corner just added something to the otherwise lonely corner.

I really like how it turned out. I didn't try to plan too much, just went with the scraps and stuff I wanted to use up. I did this spread second. The first one turned out well, too. More vintage looking with browns and conservatory type papers. Birds and cut up paint "chips". I'm not sure what they're called now...those strips of paint colors that you can pick up in the big home improvement stores. For Free!

My only regret was after I had finished the pages and thought to myself, "yes, that was really fun!", I realized that I had done one of the pages upside down! I kept flipping back and forth to see if I could somehow fix it. Nope. I thought, maybe, I could make one end of the book right side up and the other end upside down? Nope, the end they are closest to doesn't match the way they are oriented. Damn! So now, I'll have one spread in my journal that is upside down! Maybe there is a lesson in that as well. Let go of the structure of things. Go with what your creative energy provides. So that one page is supposed  to be upside down...that's my story and I'm sticking with it.