The Juliet Journals: Butterfly's Ball

BUTTERFLY'S BALL: MIXED MEDIA ART JOURNAL PAGES BY JULES CAPULET AGED 16

Digital collage 24ins x 12 ins

This morning I woke up with a MASSIVE zit on my face

I feel like such a minger! I have SO TOTALLY hated being 15

It feels like a nothing age when you are not a girl

any more but not a woman either.

On Friday I will wake up 16 and suddenly

Everything will be different. I am SO excited about

my party! Even if I still feel like

an ugly grub I can put on a mask and

I will become a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY

This is the first time I've worked on companion pages together: both image and journaling. At some point, I shall spend more time re-working the font to make it look more hand-written, but it's a job to keep up with the young people as they dash towards their inevitable fate. This page is already a few days out-of-date: today is Jules's sixteenth birthday and this morning, before going to school, she Tweeted happily about her new mobile phone and how excited she is about tonight's party, which is to be a masked ball. The entrance rules stipulate home-made masks only. Laurence Friar has gone up in my estimation, as he has miraculously, and some might suggest, unbelievably, managed to get Romeo to make a mask without yelling "THIS IS SOOOO F*CKIN' BORING!!!!" and storming back to his comfort zone of Xbox and internet dating. Romeo believes that he has just found THE ONE in an online chat room but, unless Jules has been up to something that she hasn't shared with us (which would be completely in character for a girl of her age) we, of course, know better and so are eagerly awaiting tonight's famous, romantic encounter.

My sixteenth birthday was a long time ago but I do remember the frustration of being 15: still very much a child but feeling oh-so-grown-up and ready to fall in love. If I could go back and give some advice to my 16 year-old self, I'd tell me not to take life so seriously or be afraid to make a few mistakes: not that my mother and grandmother didn't give me that sensible advice at the time, it was just that, of course, I knew far, far better than they did...

If you missed Jules's last journal page, you can find it HERE

The Juliet Journals: Secrets Of Sixteen

Secrets Of Sixteen: Mixed Media Art Journal Page By Jules Capulet Aged 16

digital collage 12ins x 12ins

I am nearly 16

Secret thoughts within me

I really want to have a boyfriend and fall in love

But what if I loose him like Mum?

I'm really enjoying the process of creating journal pages whilst assuming another persona: an exercise in exploring the role of artist as actor. It is very like designing a costume but even more intense and involved, as when I'm working on a page, I not only have to inhabit the character but also attempt to express their creative language, leaving my own as far behind as I can whilst at the same time, using my personal artistic judgement and technical know-how to oversee the operation. Today I thought back to the time just before Christmas when I ran collage workshops with groups of sixteen year olds and this helped me to focus more clearly on how Jules might make her pages.

As I'm intending each page to have a companion containing extra journaling, I'm not crowding these first ones with too much text, just laying out themes.

Friday is a big day for Jules: her 16th birthday and she is planning her party. Over the weekend, she tweeted "I've been thinking about like...turning 16 and like...getting a bf and...you know..."Doing It"...Advice anyone?"

Jules's last journal page can be found HERE