The season of connections over in the Get Messy art journal community is in full swing and I am really enjoying it.

I suppose I do use things with connections to me in my journal just by the nature of the fact that I chose it or chose to draw or paint it, but I am more and more fascinated by this as I fill this journal.

For this spread I painted and sprayed and splattered the pianola paper to get started.  When I was merrily slapping paint around, I didn’t have a plan for it, I was just making some background paper.

Once I saw the tutorial on the Get Messy blog which covered mixed media self portraits, I thought I would give it a go.

I grabbed a handful of library cards (I work at the library, so there is that connection) and painted some self portraits on each one.  I do these very quickly with no sketch or outline, so they are all different even though they are painted from only a couple of hasty selfies!

The pianola paper was folded into an accordion and the portraits along with some collage were added.  I drew some frames and stuck the whole thing into my journal onto a map page with Nottingham on, which is where I went to college way back when.  See, connections everywhere!

I really liked that the pianola roll had the words to the song on it and the line on the piece I had used is ‘I am a girl and by me that’s great!’ Perfect.

Happy Creating and Happy Thursday x