Blogging about Lee's "LAYERS" Journal

Lee's journal is a lovely size and has a real grunge art appeal on the outside.  I love all the pages created by  the other artists.

I started my page inspired by a saying which my late mother {very Irish}used,  when we or someone else was been judgemental about someone who had upset us, or whom we were talking about and making assumptions.  Mum use to say that regardless of how things seem on the outside that no one knows what really goes on in a persons life or what they were experiencing that we did not see or know about that may be  effecting how they were acting or reacting.  Her saying was, "No one knows what goes on behind the curtains." 

After my layer of gesso had dried, I stuck some a sample piece of lovely pink and green stripped linen across both pages. This was to form the background/wall/ behind the windows.  Then from a piece of watercolour paper that I had used to clean off my roller when playing with my gello plate, I cut the outline of two windows I had in my stash.  On is square and made from wood, the other is rectangle with round top and made from chipboard.  On the pages with the material I stuck three characters, in a postion to be looking out the window spaces.  The one on the right was a whimsical girl which I had printed on a page from an old book, then I had stuck very wide clear tape on top of it  and ripped it off, so that the girl and some of the book text remained on the tape.  On the left were two little characters I had drawn and coloured in with gellatoes.  Originally I was going to put them on an index card I was doing, but they ended up in this page.  I add some layers on the watercolour paper with texture paste, stencils, stamping, etc. I then stuck it on top of the book pages with material, placing it so the window cutout spaces were over the characters faces.  Then I stuck two photo transparencies with phases on them over the window spaces leaving them the full size so that white text would be an adder layer. Then I glued the windows on top in the appropriate places. I added a few more things in line with the theme "Layers" flowers on windows, some homemade stickers to reinforce the centre of page etc.   I then added typed text with my saying, which was a bit of a play on the original phase.  "The eyes may be the window to the soul, but no one knows what is behind the curtain."

As I had wanted to do a double page, and Rose's page had been a single, there was a spare page prior to my layout.  I painted this with dylusions paint using three colours. Coincidentally I had come across a poem some months ago in a book and had copied it down as I like it a lot.  It is called "layers of the face" it fitted exactly with my saying and my layout, so I typed it out on dylusions ink dyed paper, tore it out, and stuck in on the page.  I was going to put some flowers around it, but I liked the simplicity of it and so I just left it as is.  All three pages were edged with black archival ink and a little of the material shows between the edge of the pages.   I really loved how these pages turned out and I hope Lee does also.