The Power of Play

Ever have one of those days where everything that could go wrong goes very wrong? That even the littlest things upset you? That’s where I was – and my day was miserable because of my mood.

But how can you shift a mood from mean and cranky back to being who your really are? Through the power of play.

As you watch this art journal page go through its layers, in the beginning every little thing irritated me. You’ll see what everyday thing irritated me so much that I purposely made brown. It was one of those days.

But just taking a few minutes to play, even making mud kind of play, helped shift my mood. By the end, you’ll see how I handle paint smearing from the stencil that is very different from how I handled things at the start of this page.

This didn’t start well thanks to my frustration that the paint had to dry before I put the next color on top. Yes, that was a huge frustration.

Paint having to dry is not something new or unreasonable, I was the one who was unreasonable in expecting that paint wouldn’t have to dry. So out of irritation and frustration, I made mud. Ugly, yucky, mud.

Being in a bad mood doesn’t lend itself to the clearest thinking.

After the mud was made, there was instant regret. Oh, that was so very ugly. It had to be covered up, so I turned to a vintage book.

Sloppy, messy, don’t tell me what do kind of gluing down of pieces of text to hide the brown. I still had a bit of attitude in me.

As I painted the paper, I was careful to not mix my colors. I was bound and determined that the colors would not mix together, I was even careful with the brushes to make sure they didn’t accidentally pick up stray paint.

With my mind so busy being in a bad mood, how on earth could I possibly have the ability to choose the paint colors or decide what to do next? Is it magic? Nope, it’s understanding the principles of art journaling.

Knowing what those foundational principles are makes it so much easier to make decisions, even on one of those days.

If you’d like me to walk you step by step through those principles so that you can apply them when your art journaling so that you never have to be stuck no matter what happens on the page the check out my online workshop called Art Journaling FUNdamentals.

The brown has been banished, the colors have stayed separate and then it happened. I made a big O.O.P.S. with black paint.

I had an idea and as soon as I stenciled just one word of the idea, I knew it was an O.O.P.S. It was an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly.

When I started this page, in the sour mood, it was tough for me to appreciate an O.O.P.S. but I kept playing. The more I played, the better my mood. So by this point in the page, I could see the opportunity in the horrifying black smudge.

What had started as one word, became the random background using my It’s Time to Play stencil that I designed for StencilGirl Products.

There are 5 quotes about play on here. But the goal this time wasn’t to read the full quotes, but to have parts and bits of the sayings fill up the background.

That’s one big reason why I love words on stencils– they can make lots of different looks from a title on a page to background to – well, you’ll see in the next photo how these words get used.

I had worked so hard to keep the paint from smearing and it did anyway. Not from my brush or the wet paint on the page but from the palette. The edge of stencil was dipped into the paint by accident.

O.O.P.S. in the best possible way! Just yellow had been on there but now I went all in and actually added more to the back!

That created the random splotches of paint here and there. Stencils can do anything. Maybe not anything since they can’t do my laundry- but they do a whole lot in an art journal!

By this point in the play, my mood had shifted from extremely cranky and frustrated back to calm and reasonable.

If you ever have a bad day try getting out your art supplies and just making something. Anything. Just using your art supplies can help shake off a rough day because that is the power of play.