The watercolor month is over (I just finished another ATC, LOL! It does not seem to be over for me, but at least I am not counting them any longer.) and I’ve started doing other stuff. Actually, I am continuing with other stuff, which is mostly my coursework… One new thing that I started some weeks ago is a ‘She Thinks Positive Journal’. One day I was in the Art shop and innocently looking around in the paper section and I saw this fabulous spiral bound Fabriano sketchbook… Now, you must know one thing about me: I am a sucker for 90g yellowish drawing paper. I’ve been buying Canson sketching blocks for ages and using them to make my hand-made journals. It does not matter that I always use watercolor on those journals and that 90g paper wrinkles. I love it even more for that. So, even though I have still a lot of Canson 90g paper and I could make several hand-made journals, somehow when I saw this one, I had to have it. Besides, it was only 2.5 EUR! Hey! That’s a lot of happiness almost for free!

So, I got home and started with painting. Actually I was pretty much in a state over something and very emotional and all and that’s how the idea was born to make a kind of let it out but don’t let it show (my specialty) journal. Here’s how it works: I start writing my heart out in pencil on those beautiful yellowish pages. I pour my negativity and sadness and bitterness and all the unanswered questions and unfulfilled expectations and all the stuff that may reside in me and may or may not want to come out (I am an introvert, remember, I do not bother people with my stuff), so I squeeze it all out and then I cover it with a layer of white gesso. That way I empty my negativity on there and get a beautiful white page for painting (gesso also helps to firm the pages a bit so they do not wrinkle so much). Then I write an affirmative thought, which must be something positive because no matter how negative I may feel, there is always something positive I can find. If I cannot think of anything, which is rare, then I pull an oracle card and take it from there. Oracle cards are great way to get a positive thought for the day! I write down the thought and then I draw a face. No erasing, so they are far from perfect, but that’s the whole point.

Enough words, I think, let me show you how it looks. There are 60 pages in the book, so there will be 120 faces and affirmations. Quite a lot, but it goes nicely for the time being. Here are two of them for today: