My Creative Weekend So Far: FYV and Passport to Art

It's a long weekend here in the United States, and I'm taking the opportunity to get some creative play time. On Friday, I prepared an art journal for Shimelle's Learn Something New Everyday class by applying gesso to its 25 pages! I also started planning the pages to finish my Passport to Art altered book which I started in July in the free class offered by Bernice. To help me along the way, I checked in with the Find Your Voice Graduation Party hosted by Kristin.  The Graduation Party is full of challenges and inspiration, and I'm happy to report that I finished my altered book!  The final page is above. The journaling reads:
 "'People don't take trips.  Trips take people.' John Steinbeck. 
My life - my identity- who I am has been shaped by travel . . . the trips I took as a child, the ones in high school, trips with Paul, trips with family all have become a part of me and how I approach life. I hope to never stop traveling and making art."
Tonight I want to share three of the pages I made in conjunction with challenges at the Graduation Party. I'll be sure to share the rest of my pages sometime on my blog, and I'm hoping to find a way to show the book as a whole.

This page was made in conjunction with Challenge #5 to use story outline cards. The card was really helpful because there was a lot that I wanted to communicate in this page which was about the trip I took to Portmeirion, a village in Wales which had been on my wish list since I saw the PBS show The Prisoner, back in high school. I wanted to communicate a little about the village, a bit about its connection to the TV show and also tell the story of the ordeal the journey turned into when Clara and I took a train that we thought was going to the town but ended up over ten miles away.  The bicycle and #9 are from the TV show; the flowers and butterfly (and background picture) represent Portmeirion china and the village; the journaling and quote ("Even with the best of maps and instruments we can never fully chart our journeys.") capture the flavor of our trip (which included the train, a very local bus, and a long hike).

This page as made in conjunction with the color challenge (challenge #4). I was going to do a lot more journaling, but I think by focusing on the colors, I ended up with a stronger page which communicates what I wanted to about our love of water-y vacations.

And, finally, a page I was really struggling with about the attitude we take toward traveling.  My creative block was solved when I turned to challenge #1 (the quote challenge) and decided to tell my story mainly through quotes (with a little journaling thrown in). The quotes do a better job of explaining than I could, I think.  Here are my four quotes:
"A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it." John Steinbeck
"Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God." Kurt Vonnegut
"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." Martin Buber
"He who would travel happily must travel light." Antoine de St. Expery.
My journaling reads "We travel light by being patient, keeping our expectations in check and being nimble and light on our feet, as plans inevitably change. You can't control things - so just relax and go with the flow."
Tonight I plan to finish reading the Find Your Voice lessons (I stopped about half-way through), work on the other challenges for the Graduation Party, and check in on all the wonderful links in the Scavenger Hunt Link-Up from yesterday.  The link will be open until the end of September, so feel free to stop by if you haven't already.
Tomorrow, I'm going to work on some backgrounds for my LSNE art journal and start drawing faces in it. Thank you everyone who's linked up with the scavenger hunt, to Bernice for the Passport to Art class and to Kristin for the Find Your Voice class! Let me leave you all with one more quote from the layout at the top of today's post:
"I haven't been everywhere but it is on my list." Susan Sontag