Elements of Art Journaling: My Journal Cover

I'm taking The Elements of Art Journaling with Effy Wild (effywild.com/elements). I'd never altered a book before, so I decided to do that for my journal, rather than using a composition book or Moleskine Cahier. It wasn't till my drunk-on-color self had most of it done that I remembered we're going to be working with the elements as our theme for the class. It only takes a little bit of acrobatics to relate all that stuff to the elements, right? I forget why I put down all of the collage elements with gloss gel medium instead of matte, but it made it very difficult to unify the piece with color, since so few of the many colorful media in my studio will stick to the glossy surface. I convinced a little bit of spray ink to stain, though, and that made it feel more like one composition. Adding the 3-D stuff was the most fun. Most of my past artwork has had to be flat enough to go through Post Office machines, so getting to make something lumpy was a treat. The dragon fly has been waiting a long time (like maybe more than ten years) for the right home. I made him out of red wire using instructions from a book called Chinese Knotting. The red was too red for the layout, so I rubbed blue alcohol ink over him before gluing him down. The daisy in the upper right is a nod to my twisted sense of humor. It came with a Diva Cup. Hey, earth is an element, right? It doesn't get any earthier than that. LOL! I forget where I found the butterfly. It was too blah in its original color, so it also got a dose of alcohol ink. When all else fails, add color! I wish I could say the images had some great meaning for me or represented the elements in some way. Drunk on color is right. While covering the book with gesso, I knew there was supposed to be a theme. But once the blue Inktense went down, I just went color crazy in that very me way I do. Midway Through Front Spine Back