Altered to Perfection: A Year in the Life of an Art Journal|one

I am happy to be taking part in A Year in the Life of an Art Journal challenge again.

This year the prompts are for photographers as well as art journalers.

The challenges are given out on the 15th and 30th of every month.

Here is the challenge for January 15, 2013:

PROMPT: New Year's resolutions or ONE WORD.

Do you make New Year's resolutions, or take part in the ONE WORD project?

SHOOTERS: Shoot your mug with your word or something that symbolizes your word.
(Sharing on Monday Mugshots on fb also)

BOOKERS: Use watercolors on your page to emulate your word... (if you don't have water colors, watered down acrylic paint will do just fine.) use color to convey that word and what it means to you. While your paint is WET, sprinkle salt on it, and let it sit. When your paint is dry, brush off the salt. (people taking part in the creative prompt can put their mugshot for this prompt on this page.)

I have been choosing a word for my year for the last five years.

I tend to over-burden myself about unnecessary things

and this year, I've decided it's time to MINIMIZE.

For these pages I used a double spread in my almost complete (YAY) journal that was already gesso'd and started covering it with a layer of mod podge and then random pages of vintage text from dictionaries, old scouting book, vintage hymnal, worn copy of Pride and Prejudice, etc.

I just mod podge'd away and didn't worry if there were wrinkles or anything.

Then I started painting on a water color wash of orange...my favorite.

(Make sure your page dries in between each thing you do.)

I added two pictures that I printed off quickly on my regular printer. One is of my coffee mug that I wrote my One Little Word on. I used a Sharpie Marker and free-handed on the mug. Then I placed it directly on the oven rack at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or so. Won't wash off now. :)

The other picture is a little setting I made with some Scrabble tiles to spell out MINIMIZE.

I added scribbles of oil pastels and gelato here and there. Did some smudging. Then I took some Bahama Blue acrylic and just let it drip down my page. Just anything that made me smile and broke up the orange a bit.

I began to write random words that represented things I wanted to minimize. I used a Sharpie marker for the bold words. Then around the word I used a Glaze gel pen to write how I would MINIMIZE those areas.

I have found that the Glaze pens work great on top of any type of medium - even the waxy oil pastels.