"Threads of Life"

I worked on this 8 x 8, this morning, and must have re-worked the background, at least, 5 times so there are many layers here. I had transferred some calligraphy from an ink jet printout to begin with but it's now hidden under the many layers :) The trees are transferred from a photo I have here in my stash.

I'm beginning to become more comfortable with gel transfers since I've been using the soft gel-matte medium instead of the heavy gel. That may have been my problem from the beginning of my art journey :) But; it's all about discovery, learning, re-doing, letting go of the inner critic. Journaling has really allowed me to take leaps that I probably wouldn't have taken before. After all; journaling is just for us! We can create without judgments, deadlines and in our own time. There is much to be said for this.

I call this piece Threads of Life because I really love trees and particularly the bare ones. I find the shapes of the branches, very artistic, reaching out, to us, and some of their tiny branches are thread-like to me. Trees are reminders of life and they offer us protection in many ways. One of my memories of childhood was sitting under a big, huge willow tree sipping a soda with my friend in the hot summers. We didn't have a thing called air conditioning and the trees offered us some cooling off time.

Thank you all for your supportive comments on my 8 x 8 pages. My journal is getting thicker and I made a cover for it a couple of weeks ago which I'll share soon.

Hope you all are having a good beginning to your week. I began my week with Monday and Tuesday time with Sophia! She is so, very close to walking now; standing up on her own when she's not even realizing it and I love the expression on her face when she realizes she balancing up all by herself; a proud smile comes over her! And - Grandma, too :)

Warm thoughts for all of you........................Love much, Marilyn xxoo