The fourth week of the Documented Life Project issued the art challenge of using writing within the theme for the month of “The blank page and how to face it.” The journal prompt was “Words with Friends.” Here’s how we each interpreted that challenge:

Jan:
My first thoughts in this challenge immediately jumped to books. Books have been my friends all my life. I never left the library as a kid without a huge stack of books checked out. My little sister got frustrated with me when I decided to read rather than play with her (trust me, we did play a lot), and she would try to hide the book I was reading if I left the room. If I couldn’t find it right away when I came back, I’d start a new book. I blame her for my habits as an adult of having several books going at the same time! For this challenge, I drew a bookshelf with colored pencils and then in the grain lines of the wood, I wrote words. The books on the shelves were cut from book paper and colored with colored pencils. For the quotes, I tore paper and printed the words in ink with a quill pen. When that dried, I lightly rubbed over the top and edges of the paper with a brown watercolor pencil and then brushed water over it to give it a slightly aged look.

Melinda:

As I pondered this prompt, I thought of some good friends of mine and how I would want to communicate “words with friends.” I typed out a letter and printed it. I folded, opened, closed, smudged some chocolate, “spilled coffee,” and let it “accidentally” get drawn on by a kid to make it look well-read. I used a couple ads from a magazine to look like a living room for the background that the letter would be sitting in.

Ninja Boy:
I showed the kids the post about word doodles to give them some ideas for their journals. Ninja Boy wrote the word fruit with banana shapes and added the store setting.

My Princess:

Miss Tickles:
She found a package of letter stickers for her page.