Art Journaling Good Moods

This week's Positively Creative Art Journaling exercise is about brain washing...I mean, nurturing a happy mood. Frankly, I just had fun with this spread, got almost silly at one point. Once more there were no new ways to get paint on the page so I just used a credit card to drag first yellow paint across the page rather than down, then white paint. I thought the white covered the yellow too much so I made one more drag with yellow, this time from top to bottom. Then I rubbed over it all with a baby wipe to kind of blend and knock back that last layer. Eh - as usual, not exactly what I envisioned but I'm learning not to agonize over that.

So the journaling included three different steps: 1. Pick a paint chip strip in a color that makes you happy; 2. Think of 5 things that put you in a happy mood to write on the page; 3. Draw something on the page that may or may not be related to your 5 things (but which makes you happy).

A couple of things about this exercise appealed to me - the use of a paint chip and the invitation to draw rather than cut pictures out of a magazine. As I stood in the paint department studying the paint chips, waiting for one to jump out at me as happy, I couldn't help thinking that I'd already sort of done this in the very beginning when we were asked to pick 3 favorite colors to work with. Don't favorites of anything intrinsically make one happy? Then there was the issue of yellow which seemed an obvious choice. I mean, who would not agree that yellow is just a happy color? Yellow was already one of my paint colors and I hate being obvious, so I was finding this just a little hard. I did end up bringing a yellow paint chip home along with the color I ended up using and one more. I almost think I chose these not so much because the colors themselves made me feel happy (although I decided that on some level they do) but because of the clever names that were given to them, like Magic Purple Moon, Violet Diva Royale and Playful Lemon Spritz. After studying them for several days, the lavender strip won out, looking good against the yellow background.

That scalloped strip next to my paint chip? I've been itching to find a place to use it in this journal. It was trimmings off a padfolio that I used to try out colors for the satin stitching that would finish its edges. Of course, I couldn't toss it out so it has been waiting awhile to find its place. I wouldn't normally use happy faces but those spaces demanded I fill them thus. I jotted down some happy mood things, not unlike the responses to previous prompts to what makes me smile, laugh, etc., then wrote them in gel pen starting on the paint chip and running off onto the right hand side. And then it was time to get out those Sharpie markers and start drawing, really very fun. As for the lettering on the other side, I wasn't very neat or fancy with it which I didn't think mattered when I did it. But the more I looked at it, the more its sloppiness bothered me, made it look like it didn't belong. I continue to be amazed at how much simple outlining of shapes can transform them into something with more presence, as it did here. Still loose and haphazard lettering but looking more like it was intended to be that way.

So what was with my quip about brainwashing? Well, with the page complete, Dale Ann had one more thing she wanted us to do. Think of those 5 happy thoughts before going to sleep and again when waking up every day for a week. Go to bed happy and continue that happy feeling in the morning with these thoughts and it will keep you in a happy mood all day. Have a string of happy mood days and you should find yourself in a better feeling place at the end of it. And then it will become a habit. Sounds like brain washing to me!