Surprised to hear music playing?
Yep, my weblog is usually a ‘quiet place’ – but not today!

My son discovered the band ‘Eels’ last year.
He bought their cd’s, saw a documentary and went to a concert.
Ofcourse he played their music for us too, and I must say: he has
a good taste in music! I love the songs, the lyrics are awesome and
since I like to use lyrics in my art I made a page with it. I finished this
over a week ago (it was on the songs in my heART blog already) but
I show it to you while you hear that song playing. (At least I hope
you hear it – my beloved helped me include music into my blogpost…)

The background is one of the photos my mom send me – skies and clouds.
The eye is a gel medium transfer. The arm/hand is a photo of my own hand.
I made the pile of ‘earth’ with distress embossing powder. Acrylic paint in
the bottom part of the page, and journaling with a white sharpie.

“The sky in your eyes
The earth in your touch
The spirits come together
It’s almost too much
And this is where it gets good…”

And I have some ‘lists’ for you….
I have a blast working on these pages – the seize of the journal is fun to
work on (5.1 x 8.3) and I finished a couple of pages in the past two days
(and some more are halfway)

This is one I made last Friday

List #4 – Today’s Playlist

I think the next one is my least favourite page until now…
Oh well, not every page has to be perfect! Here it is

List #8 – What’s in my bag

On the other hand – the next page became one of my favourites… so cute!

List #9 – Favourite websites/blogs

And – as promised – my take on the ‘Fave things’ prompt:
Favourite Features.

This page, in particular the photo, has a comical story…

When I saw the prompt ‘favourite features’ I didn’t have to think long about it.
I have beautiful legs. Not long, but beautiful.

(I have to thank my mom! She is seventy now, but she still has legs like this!
Seriously, she looks like a young girl – and since my body shape looks like her,
I find that very encouraging. But never mind – where was I…)

Oh yes, my legs.
I once saw a photo of a pin up girl, laying on her back, wearing high heels
and having her feet put upon the wall… get the picture?
I wanted a photo of my legs that way…

I thought about asking my son to take the photo, but I felt a little bit
embarrassed to ask him (and besides – he was busy studying for a test)
so I let it go. My beloved? Sorry, but he’s not the best photographer
and again – embarrassing.

But then I suddenly had last Friday all to myself, remember?
So I thought – what the heck, let’s give it a try with the self timer.

I was wearing my old, comfy house suit, but I dressed up the lower part
of my body (c.q. legs) in nylon stockings and put my heels on.
The best light to take a photo (and a ‘free wall’ to place my feet) was in the
bedroom, so I placed the camera in the window-sill and put a pillow in place
where I would lay down (for focusing)
Then I hit the button – ‘ran’ to the spot – threw away the pillow – lay down
positioning my feet against the wall and waited for the ‘click-clack’.

I did this several times.

The photos looked absurd – but once I cut of the part where the worn out
sweatshirt and my red, sweaty face without make-up was visible.. the picture
was exactly what I was aiming for! I found a real funny quote to go with it,
so here’s my take on the prompt at These Are a Few of my Favourite Things

My favourite features: my legs!

“Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.”
~ Marlene Dietrich ~

And you know what really made me giggle?

When I’d cut out the photo and positioned the image on my page,
I saw this:

Why had I  wrenched my body into those weird positions?
I could have achieved the same effect by sitting on a chair!

I hope you enjoyed this extra post.
I hope you enjoyed the music.
I hope you have a lovely Sunday!
I’ll be back on Tuesday – well, let’s make that Wednesday.
See ya!

Okay, I’m trained as an art teacher – so every now and then this part
of me shimmers through on my blog: I can not help it that I want to
teach you something. And the most important lesson I can give you is:

Pause and look!!!

Don’t go on and on and on working on a layout… pause and look
at what the page has to say… pages talk, you know!
All you have to do is stand still, look and listen.

And then you will see which direction your work is taking.
Just go where the layout leads you.
Don’t try to force it the other way ’cause it won’t work.

I show you.

..

This is what happened while I was working on my page for the “chronicles”

Most of the time, I prepare the pages with a layer of gesso – and that’s what
I did here too. After that, I painted the background in a musterd colour.
I found that too dark, so I took a sponge and wiped some paint off.

The page was still a bit blur, so I took my spray ink and dripped it random
on the page, moving the book to let it flow. This is the result.
(The colours on the photo aren’t very good, it was late in the afternoon
and the light came in low through the window.)

My eye fell on the strange shape that the ink made on the right side.
So I paused and looked.

..

It’s like looking at the clouds
like you did when you were
a kid, seeing all kinds of shapes
and let your imagination go…

…and I saw a pregnant,
singing lady!

I couldn’t get rid of the image,
so I went with it.
I wasn’t planning to,
but the singing lady just
wanted to be on my page.
I couldn’t ignore her.

Here you see the rough sketch
(click on the photo to enlarge)

Once I got used to the idea that a singing lady had entered my page, I saw
trumpets in the shapes on the left side. So I gave my lady a horn section
as backing band… which satisfied both her and me!

There wasn’t much space left for my daily writing, but I told her “don’t push
your luck little lady”, this is my page too – move over a bit and let me in!

She did, and here’s the result!
(The colours in this photo are more accurate by the way)

Another thing I couldn’t ignore this week… the new challenge over at
These Are a Few of my Favorite Things

“What is your favourite quote”

And my-oh-my… did I face a major dilemma here!

My favourite quote is from a Leonard Cohen song… and you all remember
that I didn’t want to make the last page in my Leonard Cohen art journal
with this song because I was afraid that, after I finish, Leonard would die…

So what to do – find another quote?
Naaahhhh…
Don’t start making this page?

Maybe I should not have done this, but I did.
The page was in my head and had to be made…
I didn’t add it to my “Leonard Cohen art journal” though –
that might help.

(How’s Leonard’s health at the moment? Anyone know? Normally, I’m
not superstitious AT ALL but this time I keep my fingers crossed!)

The background contains the songlyrics over and over again. I sprayed tissue
paper with spay ink and used gel medium to glue it to the page which gives it
a nice texture. The dots are stamped with bubble wrap plastic and white paint.

Here’s a detail, which shows my favourite quote.

I end this post with showing you the ATC’s I made for Phinner a while ago.

“Women always worry about the things men forget”
“Men always worry about the things women remember”

It hardly shows, but the next one is a piece of thick, clear plastic.

The next ATC shows part of the top 2000 list that was in the newspaper –
Phinner played along in my top 2000 blog party, and I had that in mind
when I made the cards for her.

And a wooden fertility goddess – just because I liked
the look of it (and Phin does too, as she wrote me!)

Currently, a thunderstorm hangs over the city and I might be forced
to shut the computer down if it gets heavier. I have more to show you,
but I save that for next time. See you then!