art journal pages

I wanted to use the punch remains from the preceding page to create the flowers on this page. This was my hardest page this week. I still am not completely pleased.

The verse is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

I love this page. I used the computer to collage a da Vinci sketch and a finger knitting diagram onto a page along with my text. I then crumpled the page several times. Then I finger smoothed it and sprayed it with an instant coffee mixture until areas of the page had coffee pooled in it. Then I threw oatmeal and salt down on it in some places and coffee granules in others and let it dry. Once it was dry, I scrubbed all the food and salt bits off, tore it out, and ironed it.


It isn't complete. I need to find a genuine 'handmade' tag to use on this page. The text is Psalm 139:13-18.

13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

I think all the text on this one is perfectly legible, if you click on the photos and look at the full-sized image. Last week, I experimented with oil marbleization on book pages. The image of the children with the butterfly is one of the pages I created.

This page wasn't complete until I found a cocooned baby (swaddled) to transform into a butterfly (my girls loved being swaddled and wouldn't sleep unless they were swaddled - both of them went until past a year - I was afraid I would have to swaddle them until they were eleven but they both gave it up on their own - I am afraid I didn't have as much luck with pacifiers and simply had to take those away).