souldare

Souls who follow their hearts thrive . . .(Proverbs 13:19 The Message)

It seems that the work of adult life is to clean up messes. From household chores to taking garbage to the curb to cleaning out the car or the gutters, our clean-up work is never done.

So when I first started trying my hand at art play, I spent a lot of energy chiding myself for the clutter and messes that my play left behind. Yet secretly, I just wanted to play, to get paint on my hands, to rummage through paper fodder to glue into my journal. It took practice and patience with myself to let my art be messy. And once I got over my frowning adult self, I started enjoying the process, and watched with wonder and surprise to see how the “experiment” worked out.

When I don’t have time to paint or play with various mediums, I gravitate towards simple collages. I use a Elmer’s glue stick, the purple kind, so I can see the glue covering the back of the image I’m gluing down. I often just pick random images, overlapping them on the page.

A few days ago, I referred you to Grid Love. When I first tried the technique, I didn’t really like it, but the experiment challenged me to think and to plan a differently.

Changing up a technique, and especially choosing one that doesn’t immediately resonate with my usual practice opened up a fresh perspective. And the more I made these, I started to really enjoy seeing how they came together.

Here are two more links to the DaisyYellow site, where she pushes her experiment to see where her creative play takes her.

Grid Collage (The Expansion Pack)

Grid Collage (Fast Forward)

And now for your daily prompt:

The last time I allowed myself to be messy was . . .