Finished "change art journal" cover

I finished the cover of my special "change art journal". At least I think it's finished, for the moment, anyway :). It looks quite different now than it did last week. I had bought some new colours on my trip to the art supply shop, and I just had to try them out. And then I just got carried away...

I saw some small cardboard letters in the shop, and thought that they might just be perfect for adding to the cover of my journal. So I picked up all the letters I needed to spell "change", and was as pleased as punch, and really excited to go home and stick them on to my journal straight away. They really were just perfect. Their size was perfect for the cover, and the word fitted the length of the journal perfectly. Total and complete perfection. Right?

Well, no, actually. You might have noticed that the "C" looks slightly odd. Well, yes, you see. When one picks up a number of individual letters in order to put them together to spell a certain word, it does make perfect sense to check all the letters in your basket again before you pay and leave the shop, just to make sure that nothing's missing, and one really has all the right letters, right? Yes, exactly, that's what I was telling myself that I should have done back there at the shop when I got home and unpacked my stuff. Instead of just throwing the letters into the basket, totally convinced that I had all the right ones. Which of course I didn't. I could have kicked myself when I realised that I had managed to get two Gs and no C. I mean really. It's not such a hard word, is it? And it's only 6 letters! I mean that should be possible to get right?? And yes, of course, that was the same day I bought the wrong frame...

Anyway. There I sat, itching to paint and finish my journal covers, with two Gs and no C. I considered finishing the covers and adding the letters at the end, after another trip to the art supply shop the following week. But I wanted the lettes to be part of the whole thing, and not a seperate addition stuck on top of it all. So what to do? Wait with the cover until I had the right letter? Or maybe trying to cut off some parts to make the G look more like a C? Of course I tried the latter. First it looked as if the material was too strong to cut, but eventually, I managed to cut off a piece, although not without breaking the whole thing in two in the process.

Well, it might not look like a perfect C, and my scissors are probably ruined now, but at least it does not look like a distinct G anymore. And I guess that in the end, this whole business is just very approrpiate. Because after all, change isn't always going the way you want it, and sometimes, life throws a G at you when you desperately wanted a C, and you can either give up, put your dreams on hold, and feel very sorry for yourself, or you can just try and make the best of it, and turn that G into a C that works for you.

Anyway. I didn't show you the back cover last time, so here it is. When I was finished with my journal covers, I wasn't quite sure what to think of it. Did I like it? I just couldn't make up my mind. It turned out so completely different than I had in mind, and somehow not really "me".

It was the little splatters that I wasn't really happy with, especially the golden ones where a bit too much. I've added some white circles around them and even covered up some of them since I took these photos, so it's looking just a tiny little bit different now. But I like it a lot better now. So maybe I might not paint all over it again soon, but instead just leave it as it is. .

I also did a first journal page, but I'm going to save that for another post, because this post is already far too long, and it's now time to go to the party
 Happy Paint Party Friday!