I had a plan that was inspired by a pattern on the sidewalk I noticed when I was on a bike ride. It was a crazy crazy plan.  It involved precision.  Straight lines and measuring. If this was a movie, you’d hear the ominous music playing.

But this isn’t a scary movie, it’s play inspired by the everyday, this month’s Let’s Play theme.

What is Let’s Play?  It’s all about rediscovering the ability to play. Each month I share a specific strategy that helped me recapture the freedom and fun of play. You can see all of them here. Plus get entered into the monthly giveaway by leaving a comment- details down below!

Watch How I used a pattern from the sidewalk in my art journal on YouTube.

Here’s the pattern than made me obsessed with using a grid in my art journal.

The moment this  pattern grabbed me, a plan that was destined to lead to an OOPS was hatched.  First, I would paint over ancient glue dots to create the raised bumps.

Next came the perfectly straight strips of paper that would make the grid lines under them.  I measured. CAREFULLY.  Really I did!  But the strips of paper did not come out as expected.  No fault of the paper cutter.  This was total user error.  OOPS!

But I recovered.  I picked the most similar ones to use for building a precise grid. Or so I thought I would be building a grid.  I really wanted to build a grid.  In the video, you see why it didn’t turn into a grid.

Those tall yellow ledges were just the perfect platform for the leaping, running, dancing girl from my Learning to Dance stencil.  The title didn’t fit perfectly in the space I wanted, but that’s no problem with a stencil!  It’s easy to rearrange the words to fit the space.

Two things were very clear to me at the end of my play session.  One, this page isn’t complete yet.  Two, I was done working on it for now, after all an art journal page does not have to be finished in one session.

Of course, I’ll be sharing where it goes next.  Get signed up for my newsletter (if you’re not already) and you’ll be sure to know what happens next to this page!

Want to see more Let’s Play videos? You can find all the weekly posts here.

Sharing your play:   I, and a whole bunch of others, would love to see what you’re creating!  We’re sharing it in the Facebook group called A Colorful Place to Play. Why Facebook?  I’ve listened to your feedback about how and where you’d like to share your play instead of the link parties.

Monthly giveaways:  Leave comment on any (and all for more chances) of the weekly Let’s Play blog posts to be entered and one winner each month will be chosen by random.org.  Want more chances to win a $50 gift certificate to DickBlick.com?  Pin any of the images from the page or share about it on Facebook- then come back and leave a comment telling me what you did and you can have more chances to win! Giveaway closes the Sunday, July 31st at 11 pm EST and the winner will announced on the blog the following Monday.

Congrats to Margaret Price, last month’s winner!

Precious paralysis struck while I was making this art journal page.  I was between a rock and a hard place.  I loved this background so much that I didn’t want to ruin it.  But I wanted to add more to the page.

Was it a bad thing that I had a bit of paralysis?  Not at all!  One could even call it an O.O.P.S. – an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly.

Check out the video – there were quite a few Oopsies happening on this page!

Watch How to use a Gelli print in your art journal on YouTube.

I’m starting with a background I created Gelli printing® in last week’s Let’s Play video. You can see it here. Then I added a bit more color with Dylusions paints.

O.O.P.S. When I stamped Frida, she was a bit lighter than I wanted so I grabbed some black paint…and that led met to giving Frida a little more body…but it was super dark on her body and hair but her face was too light .O.O.P.S. again.

To darken up the face lines, I grabbed a stabilo pencil and sketched over parts of the images.

It began to feel overly precious again.  I was in love with where it was at but it wasn’t finished so I had to just take a risk.  My adrenaline rush of the day lol.

Things were not going as I expected at this point.  When stenciling fearless with my Uplifting Words stencil…I had too much paint and I expected it to run underneath.   Surprisingly it did not!

Then the journaling did not go as I expected.  The pen at first was too thin so I grabbed a Pico Embellsiher to get bolder lines.  Then instead of writing in the normal order, I wrote all over the place and then up.  Did it matter? Not with scribble journaling!

Thanks for joining me for today’s play!  Would you like more play?  Check out my free workshop, Permission to Play!

Here are the supplies I used. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small percentage. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and you are helping me keep this blog and my videos ad free! Thank you- I don’t like ads any more than you do!  The Frida stamp is from Invoke Arts and Mona is from Museum Stamps.

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