Behind the Art with Felecia

Hello, scrappy crafty friends!!!

I'm sharing another project from the gorgeous Soft and Strong Kit...this one MIGHT be my favorite!  

Have you ever taken a good look at you hands?  Ever thought about all that your hands do for you? All that they provide?

While crafting a different project for this kit, my hands were covered with artistic evidence. As I washed them, I thought "these are soft and strong!" 

I think a lot about my grandmother Dorothy's hands...she was a farm girl, and her hands were always in the dirt of the garden or the flour for a cake, cutting strawberries for jam or hanging laundry. She had hands with character, hands that worked and hands that loved her family by their provision.

I wonder some times what my hands tell other's about me. 

My own are rarely manicured nor adorned. I lotion frequently to keep them from getting rough and there are almost always traces that I've been in my studio playing with something. they do a lot of typing and clicking on a mouse.

I thought about how my hands had played bass guitar and held babies, soothed and supported, put on makeup and wash dishes. 

They are tools of my life.

A search through photos revealed that my hands are rarely showing, so I had to get my husband take a  picture of them. He just might think I'm crazy.

Its just that I so vividly remember my grandmothers hands...I want them to be somewhere in my books. They have been so important...

I again played a bit with soft color and hard angles...but this time, hand wrote the title with the lovely Faber Castell Gelato.  If you're doing a layout about your hands, you should include your own hand writing - something I rarely put into my own books. 

After a few trips over the letters, I used a water brush to blur up the lines. 

Its pure serendipity that the "your are my favorite" words from the My Minds Eye paper land at the top of the photo frame. Happy accidents are good art. 

It occurs to me that my projects this month are all about my body...something, perhaps, I do not give enough thought in other projects. I'm glad to have had the chance to pay such close attention!

Peace, ya'll!