Book of Days: Cover

In 2011, most of my artsy efforts were directed towards art journaling. I've found that there's a really nice interplay between what my brain can express in writing and what it can express visually. When one or the other just isn't saying what I want to say or isn't getting to the heart of the matter, art journaling, the combination of both, is often the answer. Definitely something I want to keep doing in 2012.

To keep my art journaling habit going, I signed up for Book of Days with Effy Wild. Effy is leading a year-long art-journaling group. If you have an interest, hit the link and sign up. Hey, it's free. What have you got to lose?

Each of us in the group is picking a word or phrase to be our theme for 2012. Mine is "Trust". (Yeah, I put the period on the outside. In this case, the British way just makes more sense to me.) In this phase of my life, I'm rebuilding my ability to trust myself and others after getting a serious smackdown by someone who didn't deserve my (or anyone else's) trust. This year is about getting back in touch with the still, small voice, paying attention to my gut, and giving my own view of myself and what's good for me more weight than anyone else's.

As if the content weren't going to be challenging enough, the book I chose has really small (4" x 6") pages. I've never worked quite this small before. It'll be interesting to see what logistical challenges pop up over the year.

For the cover, I decided to be mostly monochrome. That decision held all through the background and front cover (even painted the brass-colored letters with blue Pinata inks), but I just had to use the glass-mosaic woman on the back. I've had the image in my stash for quite some time. She's from an ad for glass tiles. She had words across her middle, so I collaged over them with the phrase "How do you feel?"

Update...

She looks better in the above picture than she did in real life. The piece felt disjointed to me, so I knocked it all back with more blue. An argument could be made that I knocked it back too far, but it feels more cohesive to me, even though it's a bit darkish.