Hi there! Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful summer weekend!

Today I’m happy to share another of my recent journal pages, which is featured in Kim Rae Nugent’s newest book, Journal Starters: Nature Backgrounds, Textures, & Collaborations.

This page is entitled, “Fresh Start,” and it was created just a few days after the last page I presented here on the blog, in a period of time that was highly challenging for me at my job. There were many days that I woke up at the sound of the alarm clock, remembered the excruciating stress I’d certainly be facing that day, and wished I could press the “reset” button and start over. I think many of us feel this way at some point in our lives, like we desperately need a “do-over.” Our daily struggles become exhausting, and we want to transplant ourselves from where we are to someplace new, different, and better. Thankfully, not long after this page was finished, I made the decision to pursue a change, and have now been placed in a new position in a different setting, far removed from so much of the stress that had been dragging me down for so long.

At the time I created this page, I was feeling a need to do a lot of writing as an emotional outlet, and so the first layer of this page consists of handwritten journaling, which I covered with collaged book pages. In addition, gesso, spray inks, acrylic paint, stencils, pigment ink, stamps, masking tape, Washi tape, rub-ons, a date stamp, India ink, pens, and an image from the Journal Starters book were used.

The image of the eggs in a nest really spoke to me, because it signifies the beginning of the miracle of life, and also calls to mind birds, which to me have always represented the idea of freedom. I mean, who doesn’t feel like they want to fly away from the chaos of their life at some point? I used a lot of bird-themed rub-on images and phrases to embellish certain areas of this page, and found that it all came together well.

Journal Starters: Nature Backgrounds, Textures, & Collaborations can be purchased at Amazon.com.

Have a great week!