PavlArt: Documented Life Project™ 2016: SEPTEMBER

Unlike the previous month, the month of September was really productive. There's a recurring theme this month. Dreams... It was unintentional. I didn't know what my word of month would be until it just appeared on its own. I had some quotes about dreams, signed up for a Dreamcatcher class, played with a dreamcatcher stencil...

September Challenge: Roll Call - Being Accountable
I found another stencil I'd cut ages ago and never used. I created this simple layout for my monthly divider. I used some distress paints and some metallic sprays.

Week 36 - Add an organic element
I don't use organic elements in my art - not that I'm obsessed with archival quality, but there's nothing worse than crumbling dry leaves all over your journal pages. So I used chipboard branches and metal "flowers". I went over the whole piece with black gesso and then used the Pentart wax pastes (similar to Viva's Inka-gold) to add some shimmer.

Week 37 - Add stitching / Word of Month
I followed Roben-Marie Smith's tutorial - if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it - and did a folding card (you can't probably see it on the picture - it folds in the middle - I photoshopped the fold out...). I don't sew... fast moving needles frighten me. So I hand-stitched the spiral shape.

I used the background for my "word of month" page - the word is, of course, DREAM.

Week 38 - Mark making in black & white over colour
I cut several new stencils and was dying to try them on something. I loved the background so much I didn't even want to mark anything over it. But in the end, I made some tiny marks - arrows in black and some small lines in white. The quote is from a movie I was watching while painting this page (Soldier's Girl).

list TEN™: Things I hope to gain as I grow older
I painted this background and waited for a prompt to use it with. It's quite dimensional, because I wanted to hide the stitching from the previous "word of month" page. I cut the words on my Silhouette Portrait machine and glued them on top of the background.

I have this love-and-hate relationship with my Silhouette machine. I was cutting two things out of the black cardstock - and I didn't notice that each had a different outline colour and the software cut only one of the shapes. Never mind, I told myself, selected the other shape and hit "cut". The same setting, same blade, same everything - only this time it didn't cut all the way through. Not sure why, this is not the first time it happened. It took 15 minutes to cut, and 1 hour to clean the edges with a craft knife...

Week 39 - Add stripes

This one was a quick one - I had the back of another project I was doing (see below) so I decided to fill it with stripes. I was a bit limited by the fact that the page was done on acetate (I had black page underneath for photo taking) and other elements were showing through. I added few strips of paper cut from some of my many background starters/left-overs. I added a bit of gesso, some stencilling and a quote. About dreams, of course.

Extra pages
As I mentioned above, this month was a bit more creative than usual and I painted some extra pages.

I made a tutorial for a shop I'm sometimes writing some articles for. There is a tutorial (in Czech) over on their page if you want to see the step-by-step photos.

it says "Catch your dreams"

I saw many people over on YouTube doing wonderful pieces using drops of paint and an ordinary drinking straw. It looked so easy. Well, it isn't! I guess some proficiency in directing the flow of air is required. But I turned out OK, in the end.