Explorations with watercolor crayons, pages 2 and 3

Finished up two more pages last night using the Neocolor II's. The first page was actually complete except for the journaling. I'm posting it here without the journaling because it ended up including some personal information.

I started off with a wash of acrylic paint in lime green, and then did some collage over it. I used a teal green Neocolor II around the edges of the page, making a thick border, and then I blended the crayon out onto the page using a wet brush.  I got this idea from a video by Samantha Kira Harding that I found on You Tube. I like the mixed background of the acrylic paint and the watercolor crayon. It was easy and fun, and I will definitely be doing it again.  

In fact, I meant to try it again on this next page, but once I got into it, I like the way the page looked with the crayon border, and I decided to leave it as it, just dry scribbling around the edges of the pages. 

My favorite thing about this page is the subway map from Hong Kong. My husband just got home from a 7 month deployment a few weeks ago, and his ship had all kinds of interesting port calls- Malaysia, Korea, United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Hawaii. All I asked that he bring me back was ephemera, especially anything with foreign text! He also brought home money from all of the foreign ports, but I haven't been able to use any yet...something about using money, even if it is in small denominations and not useful unless he returns to those ports, makes me feel wasteful! I'm hoping I get over it soon because I'm tempted by the pretty bills!

Seriously though, this second page was a good one for me, not because I think it turned out perfectly, but because I felt like I truly took what I was feeling and got that emotion out onto the page. Those are the pages that feel best to me, even if they aren't the "prettiest" in my journal. The map was the first thing I put down over my painted background, and then I accidentally ripped the top left of the page. These things ended up being serendipitous little surprises when I found myself writing about a part of my life that is broken, and how I need to find my way again.

The quote, from Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, is an old favorite that I've had to remind myself of at least once a year- "There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the way we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success."

I need it on a tee-shirt. :)