The theme for the month of February in the Documented Life Project challenges was Layers You Will Love! The art challenge for week 6 was “When Not to Stop” and the journal prompt was “Don’t stop, ’til you get enough!”

Jan:
This challenge took a while for me to get started. I like to have a visual in my head of the direction I’m going before I actually begin a project. That’s harder to do with multiple layers because each layer can change things a lot (positive or negative). When I came across a bird that I had drawn in my sketch book a couple years ago, I knew it wanted to be a “layer” for my page. The bird, along with some doodled flowers and butterfly, was drawn in black pen with no color. I cut them out and set them aside until their turn to join the challenge.

If I remembered them all correctly, here are my layers:
1. Covered the entire page with a chevron design scrapbook paper for background.
2. Scribbled lines and color onto background with gelatos, smearing some of it with my finger.
3. Glued torn pieces of dark and light colored music paper and random torn pieces of printed pink paper on background sheet.
4. Rubbed white gesso on parts of the page with my finger.
5. Cut and glued narrow long strips of chevron striped scrapbook paper.
6. Distressed those chevron stripes with pencil and Inktense blocks.
7. Tore various leaves and large flowers from a scrapbook paper and glued in place.
8. Stamped flower design in black ink across bottom of page.
9. Stamped flowers were too intense so added more scrapbook paper flowers and leaves on top of them.
10. Rubbed more white gesso on top of stamped flowers to tone them down.
11. Used pencil and bronze Sharpie to doodle around the flower petals and leaves.
12. Glued doodle bird, flowers, and butterfly to page.
13. Colored black and white doodles with Inktense blocks and smoothed with wet brush.
14. Stamped the letters for SING in black ink, then offset stamped the letters again and colored them with the bronze pen.
15. Added some highlights with a white pen to letters, bird, and flowers.
16. Added shadows around the bird.

Melinda:

I started reading Inkheart by Cornelia Funke right before I did this page. By the end of the first chapter I knew I would like the book. I used elements from the book for my page of layers. I started with writing out a section that I liked, then used mom’s gelatos to make some designs over that. Then using various papers and drawing, I added the rest of the layers. This kind of thing is not my favorite. It is a little more stressful way of doing art than I would normally choose. However, I know that I should stretch myself now and then to see if I find something new that I do like.

My Princess:

Ninja Boy: