Unexpected

Sometimes things grow in ways you don't expect.

I used a hand-carved stamp for the plant on this page. One is growing as you would expect and two are coming in from the side. The one in the 'correct' orientation is black and white while the others are in colour. As I stood back and looked at the page, it made me think about how things grow. We have expectations for things. When you plant a seed, the roots go down and the shoot grows upwards. It's how plants work.

Unless you're in space.

In space there is no gravity to tell the roots which way is down. The plants don't grow in the way they would on the earth.

Sometimes you sow seeds in life that you expect to have a particular outcome. But life is unexpected and things come in from left-field.

Sow the seeds and expect the unexpected.

Leave the seed

You'll never get a tree if you keep on digging up the seed to see how it's doing.

It is tempting to keep digging up a seed to see if it has germinated. But when you plant a seed you have to let it grow in its own time. You can give it the best conditions, but you can't force it to grow. Some seeds fail to germinate at all. Others take patience. Sometimes you reach the point of thinking that it will never sprout, and that is usually when the first tender shoot of green begins to show.

The trick is to keep planting and wait patiently to see what comes up.

Clerical scarves/stoles

I haven't done as many journal pages as usual in the last couple of weeks as I've been working on a gift - some clerical scarves or stoles.

The green one, in liturgical symbolism, stands for ordinary time, which is the time between Pentecost and Advent. It is the day-to-day, ordinary living time. I've decorated the scarf with wheat and fish as a reminder that there is still a harvest to be brought in, even outside of festival times. There are always opportunities even in the everyday business of living.

The purple one is for the seasons of Advent and Lent. Both are times of waiting, the lead time up to major festivals. We know the festivals are coming, but there is a time of preparation beforehand. The alarm clock is a symbol for the waiting. We set the time for the alarm to go off, knowing that we need to be ready by then.

Fears

Fears hamper us.

They obscure our sight, stopping us from seeing clearly.

They muffle our ears, stopping us from hearing the truth.

They bind our hands, stopping us from doing things.

 They tie our feet, stopping us from moving forward.

Fears can only hamper us.

Let's kick them to the kerb.

Feeling adrift

Feeling adrift...

but knowing I'm not.

Tossed on the waves...

but anchored to the rock.

A cushion is comfortable. Living without one is not.

Discomfort is not fun to live with. Not having a cushion, something to fall back on, makes it feel as if you're living on the edge all the time.

That's where faith comes in.

Spilling

There are times when you just have to spill your thoughts out on the page.

It's not always pretty, but it has to be done.

Breaking boxes

All the different boxes that people try to put us into. Pigeonholing makes us feel safe - we know exactly where we/they fit. We can find eccentric people unsettling because we don't quite know how to label them.

But really we're all bigger than that. Let's refuse to be classifiable. Let's break out of our boxes and be fully ourselves.

Fade away

A lot of the time she just wanted to merge into the background.

Any introvert knows that there are times of overwhelm. Times where you just want to fade away and not be noticed for a bit. Times where you just want to close your eyes and imagine yourself elsewhere for a while. When you're in a noisy, busy, people-filled place, fading away for a bit is the only way to survive.

This page had most of the rainbow on it. I liked it, but it wasn't 'saying' anything to me, so it sat for a while. Then I really felt the need to put a face on it. Once the features were on the page, I didn't want to put an outline or hair or anything like that. Stepping back, I could see what the page was about.

Harvest

What are you harvesting this season?

Autumn is the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'. A lot of harvesting is going on. What are you harvesting from the latest season in your life? Even if it feels as if you have spent a season in the wilderness, dry and thirsty, there will be something you have learned. Harvest knowledge and wisdom from life's events.

As I am working in both black and white journals at the moment, I thought it would be fun to do some process shots for both. I did the white one in the last post, so here is the journal with black pages this time. If you just want to see some close-ups, head down to the bottom of the post.

Collage pieces.

Gesso over the pieces. As with the white journal, I leave some patches bare of gesso. With the white pages it allows the paint to react differently on the coated and uncoated parts. With the black pages it allows dark patches to add depth.

A bit of colour. I dragged a plastic card through the teal paint to add some texture.

Some squiggles and dashes were added in gold pen.

A bit of stencilling and some more marks, this time with a black Copic pen.

 I added a few more bits of collage. I don't often do that after the first couple of layers, but I had added some marks that I wasn't happy with, so I covered them up. I forgot to take a photo in between, so you can see that there are quite a few more marks added since the last photo - some lines in Neocolor II, some white stripes and dots, and a bunch of black squares that I regretted as soon as they were done!

A good dose of grey paint pushed the new collage papers back a bit and tamed the black I didn't like. 

Neocolor II scribbles and some drippy paint helped to embed the collage further. 

White paint applied with my fingers, more stencilling, and some painted lines. The shapes in the centre then became the reason for the journalling - they look like wheat stalks to me. 

A few more details were added as seen in the photo at the top of this post. And here are some close-ups of some of the details.