Pam's HAIKU Journal

Hi there ladies,

I loved contributing to this project. Around 22 years ago I first learnt about Haiku poems, I really enjoy the simplicity of this type of poetic structure. At first I started off with something completely different to the outcome of the piece, I guess that's just the way process journey goes.

I started by laying down an opaque gesso, waited for it to dry, then adding an aquamarine and light mint on the right and left hand side of the journal pages. After it dried, I picked out a Jane Davenport stencil and used a thick black marker to outline the details of the face, I drew the hair in. I wanted to try something different, so I ripped up some beautiful paper and began to paste all the pieces down with pva glue.

I added some matchmaker acrylic paint, it's a customizing skin colour blend, at first I finished with the above matchmaker mix, but in the following you will see that I added more brown for definition; well I tried haha.

So this is the mix I ended up with. I added four Haiku's, I liked them all very much but I didn't like the way I presented them, so as you'll see I totally changed the background layout.

I went through all of my paper stock and came across typed words 12 x 12. I like the effect of the ripped up paper so much so that I decided to do the same with the back ground. I used washi tape for the young lady's eyes, I wanted to add something different. I love the way it came out. Now I needed to decide where I was going to present my Haiku's.

I didn't want to overload the whole area as it looked very busy as it was, so I wanted to tuck the poetry away in a fun little spot. I used washi tape to line the edges as well as plain sticky tape to protect the marker used to write the poem and to also protect any washi from coming away. I thought I'd use a little velcro closure to keep the tuck spot lid closed. I like the way that it reveals a little poem inside. I used some aqua pastels to colour within the small areas of the triangles, just to give them a bit of something.

This is a wide view showing the tuck spots open.

Another wide view in Black and white with tuck spots closed, just for something different. I decided to put two poems on there, I didn't want too many on the page at once as it just didn't feel right, I felt like they were all taking something away from each other, so two was enough.

All in all, I had a wonderful time creating in this journal and trying to put words together about subjects I love, I hope you like what I did Pam, it was a lot of fun.