Blast from the past: Book of Days part 1

 Book of Days ecourse by

Effy Wild 2013

Book of Days is an art journaling exploration with Effy Wild. If you want to know more about it and about this and other ecourses look HERE

Below you will find my original blogposts only slightly edited to fit my new website format. The original blogpost are no longer on my website. Want to know why read this intro post.

There where so many blogposts about this ecourse that I split them up in parts. This is part 1 of the lessons from the 2013 session I joined with the lessons made in august, september and a part of october.

Book of Days week 1-3 August 18, 2013 |

I am really starting to be an art journal junkie.  I met Michelle Rydell and Sharon Fritchey  at the Mixed Emotions workshop (see the post from last week) and they are responsible for me starting Book of Days. They shared a page from Effy Wild which said discount and I could not resist it.

Definitely an overflow of inspiration. I was again,  like with lifebook a late starter and still catching up. I finished the first 3 weeks and will show you the results here.
The session really started with a boot camp in which you make your own art journal book. But being a late starter this session I decided to use my altered atlas to make the pages in. Takes a little improvising at time because you had to prepare the page and the pages are big (about 24 by 33.5 cm / 13 by 9.5 inch)

Even though the class was called Book of Days, each week there was a BOD (book of days) page and a BOM (book of mirrors) page. The BOD page is more life art journaling and the BOM page according to Effy is:

The BOM spread is meant to be ‘inner work focused’, by which I mean instead of life journaling, it’s soul journaling – inner landscape stuff.

Since these are lessons from an art course I will not give much inside in how I made the pages, unless it was something I did myself as an idea inspired by the lessons.

Week 1 BOM: An intension page for Book of Days

book of days

Week 1 BOD: As a stencil I used die cut paper which after using it as a stencil I glued to the page like you see in the left corner of the photograph I added to this page. This page has a flap that can open as you can see in the second picture.

book of days
book of days

Week 2 BOM: Into the same color scheme as the week one page. And again a flap, this time from vellum and a picture of me with a huge cotton candy in the Efteling.

book of days

Week 2 BOD: Used a Golden crackle medium which did not crackle but gave some nice structures anyway. Love the structure and colors. Hard to catch on a picture but you can get an impression.

book of days

Week 3 BOM: I am suffering from an overflow of Inspiration and that turned into this very busy page

book of days

Week 3 BOM: What I need and get more and more is inner peace and this came out in the page
I am not very good at faces but this face was just a few lines with a marker and she looked so peaceful. My inner peace page, very happy with it.

book of days

Book of Days week 4+5 and a little bit of 6 and 8 September 29, 2013 |

It has been a while since I showed any Book of Days work. A lot of things going on in my life right now and I had trouble getting organized. Been working on several pages at the same time and every page was not quite finished. So on this blog post a lot of finished pages.

WEEK 4 BOM:Playing with napkins and working intuitive and what always comes out of my hands then has something to do with nature. In this case flowers and butterflies.

book of days

Week 4 BOD: A totally different spread with already a lot of chaos in my head. Combined napkins with some image transfers I used for Lifebook lessons. I think this page is missing something but I can’t figure out what, so leave it like this.

book of days

WEEK 5 BOM: This was a paint over collage page, where you use a magazine page of a face and paint over it. When this lesson was posted on the internet I played with the hearts that were also in this page by Effy on a piece of gelliplate printed paper. I saved this page and incorporated it in the final page, by taping it to the page with washitape and painted the back together with the rest of the pages. You can see the page with closed and opened flap.

book of days
book of days

Week 5 BOD: Effy made a page with pictures of her Combrogos or Compatriots. I am usely not so personal in my pages and decided to use little garden friends in my page. Yes I know nature again, hihi. You can see clearly here that I am working in an old atlas. Sometimes I cover the pages with paint or paper, but in this case it gave a nice colored background.

book of days

WEEK 6 BOD: For this week we are playing with gelliplate prints and my page came out a little chaotic again, with pieces of paper, stamps and letters. I really need to find some peace inside myself.

book of days

Week 8 BOM: A page with collage and personally I love how this page turned out.

book of days

Book of Days week 6 BOM and week 7, October 7, 2013 |

I really need to be creative to stay sane right now. So I am totally in a creative flow and trying to make happy pages.

Week 6 BOM: The background is made out of gelliplate printed paper. I like the background so much that I did not want to put much on top of it. Found a few pictures lying around and some words came into my head. Added some washitape, a border with orange fluorescent paint and a few leaves with an edding marker.

book of days

Week 7 BOM: All about making faces and boy did I make faces. I am glad you can’t see my own face right now because it doesn’t look all that happy. But at least my pages make me kind of happy.

When working I usely have some paper on my workdesk (underpaper its called) . I use this as a palet for paint I use, as a spraying surface to put my page on, to clean a brayer, to stick small pieces of left over tape to and they turn out quit nice. I would not get a background like this if I tried to paint it. These pages can turn into beautiful background and I decided to use them as background. So I glued a page into my big atlas and painted some gloomy faces on top of the page.
I found some butterflies (always love butterflies) for the open space above their heads and came up with some lyrics

7. BOM
book of days

Week 7 BOD: I also used a background paper and it has all kinds of paint, ink sprays and tape.
I decided to make a tall drawing with the pages turned. A tired looking person. Added a border with acrylic paint and stenciled some molding paste (actually non cracking crackling paste) to add some structure but left the rest of the background as it is. And this is exactly how I feel.

book of days
book of days

to be continued in the next blog post

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