For this week's challenge I knew that I wanted to have us write a letter to our past selves, from the perspective of today!
Reflecting on what you have overcome, and ways in which you have grown is an important factor in staying positive and forward motion (at least for me...) Plus it's always nice to give ourselves a warm hug and a proverbial pat on the back about our progress and challenges we've overcome.
As far as fun techniques, I thought about 'making your mark'....
What ways have I made my mark in the last 10 years or so? Obviously, I have started a new business in an area I never thought I'd venture in to and it is going amazingly well...but not only that, I've had a lot of personal challenges in the last 10 years.....(the last few years of my first marriage and subsequent contentious divorce, being a single/struggling mom, financial challenges of single parenthood with an uninvolved co-parent, dating again and being in love with someone who lived in a different town....)
I think I've done pretty well, these last 10 years despite the fact that at times, I have really sucked! (just ask my kids :)
So as far as fun techniques go for this week's challenge, I want you to look for 'mark making tools' outside of the obvious.
For my mark making tools, I used
*the triangular side of a makeup wedge
*a nacho cup lid (we go through 1000s of these in the studio and I HATE to throw them away so therefore I have a bumper crop of nacho cup lids)
*a 1x1 inch tile with a bullseye design
*a wine bottle cork
The other technique I want you to employ, is to write words that mean something to the woman you are today, write them big and bold and black! ( I painted mine...but you can use a sharpie or cut words out of a magazine or whatever!)
My process
I first sprayed the background with hot pink fabric dye through a honeycomb stencil. Because I am a busy bee! Once that was dry, I used a black ink pad and a 'scribble text' stamp to randomly stamp into the background.
I then 'stamped' on red paint with the nacho cup lid, in an interlocking ring design which I decided represented monkey bar rings (cause what is more challenging than monkey bars?)
I stamped on the white triangles from the make up wedge radiating out from the red rings. I snuggled in some aqua blue dots (again, my favorite color besides pink!)
and stamped on red bullseyes. This symbol for me was a no brainer, I constantly feel like I am fending off competition.
I added some dots of varying sizes with white paint and black paint.
I let all of this dry and then mod podged down some pretty punched out flower designs (just to add some pattern and color and balance out my design).
I started thinking about words that mean something to where I am NOW and painted them on, caligraphy style all over the surface. I let them dry and then painted a white 'journaling area' onto the page, partially covering up some of the words, because my 10 year ago self wouldn't have fully understood those words yet.
Once this white surface was completely dry, I wrote my letter to myself with regular ink pen!
To reiterate this weeks challenge,
You will
*Write a letter to yourself from 10 years ago, with the perspective of today.
*Make your mark with unconventional stamps and tools
*Use meaningful words, big and bold!
I hope you enjoy this challenge, this one was very meaningful for me!
Paint Happy!
Elizabeth
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