Digi Dares #138: Low

I AM NOT DUST
I AM PIGMENT

This weeks Digi Dare has been set by Sandra and she is encouraging us to explore something that has happened to us, a "low" point in life, how it made us feel at the time and how it has impacted upon our lives. She's also asked us to incorporate blending into our imagery and to select colours that reflect our feelings. I have made this layout a little darker than I would ideally wish, so that it can be viewed on-screen. The text and image should be very pale so that the viewer has to really look closely to read and see what's going on.

WITNESS
Witness believes that counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychology, hypnotherapy and other variations of ‘talking treatments’ are vulnerable to abusive practice.

Credits: Background papers: Orchid Dreams Reawakening papers by Phuong Ton, faded into paper from Bisontine's Litte Treasures kit; Rorschach test pattern made with Vinnie Pearce's Grunge Swirls; glitter flourish from Cecile's Magic Spark kit and wings from Vera Lim's Altered Wings. Spider is from Jen Ulasiewicz's Creepy Crawlies; font is Eclectic by Creating Keepsakes. Overlay: one of Ninian's texture freebies available Flickr

Three Muses challenge: Doors

GATE KEEPER

Pierre Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, MMVI

I was never a Goth but in my ceaseless pursuit of ancestral forebears, I've been wandering around graveyards and cemeteries since the age of 15. It's probably not the healthiest of pursuits, psychologically speaking, and a friend of my sister's once asked me: "so what do you do when you've found these dead people you're looking for? Say "ha ha! You're dead, I'm not?" Notwithstanding unhealthy obsessions with the past, the resting places of the departed provide wonderful source material for art works. Those in major cities are especially rich in imagery. and my holiday snaps always include a fair smattering of tombstones and mausoleums (and dodgy-looking electrical wiring, but that's another story)
This layout began life as a photograph taken in the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried. Many of the monuments there have become three-dimensional scrapbooks or visitor books. Jacob Epstein's tomb for Oscar Wilde is smothered with thousands of lipsick kiss-prints left by adoring acolytes. Other graves display touching and lyrical collections of devotional offerings from those who have made pilgrimages to the final resting places of their heroes and heroines: ornaments and statuary, rotting or desiccated floral tributes; photographs, poems and messages on scraps of paper, dolls and teddies; little pebbles that mark a visit with still, silent dignity, and in the case of Jean Paul Sartre (buried in the Paris Montparnasse Cemetery) cigarettes and a bottle of beer.

Think Monday Think ATC: Summer Solstice

SATURDAY NIGHT SOLSTICE FEVER

Digital collage 8ins x 8 ins

June has been a fallow month for me digitally as I've been concentrating on my garden and other outdoor jobs. To kick start me into action once more, I thought I'd do a challenge. This little layout began life as a response to this week's Think Monday Think ATC challenge title: Summer Solstice. The subject matter attracted me because it reminded me of my wonderful friends in Lithuania, where they know how to celebrate the Solstice, being one of the last countries in Europe to convert to from Paganism to Christianity.

The photograph, although purchased from a street market in Kaunas, Lithuania, was actually taken in the studio 0f S.Antonoff, Grecia 312, Montevideo, Uruguay. There is some very feint, almost illegible writing on the back. If you look carefully, you'll see that they have a little mascot dog with them on the table!

Like I said, it was going to be an ATC... but it grew. I could chop the edges off to fit the challenge, but it wouldn't look so jolly.

Credits: Background paper (modified), word art and green flower in woman's hair from the Saturday Night Fever kit by Moonscraps; photo background from Midsummer Day and Eve Sun and Star foil Elements pack available from Miss Crow's Magickal Emporium.

The photograph from my personal collection.

Moonscraps

Miss Crow's Magickal Emporium

Digi Dare 136

FAMILY VALUES 1: CHARITY
Digital Scrapbook page 12cm x 12cm

On first glance of this layout, those who know me may be persuaded that I am now in La-La land, but let me remind you that the Devil is in the detail. This week's Digi-Dares Challange is to journal a conversation; to include a word from that conversation in the title and to incorporate quotation marks somewhere in the layout. This layout is my response to that challenge with the exception of one possibly important factor: I did not actually witness the conversation, it was related to me by my mother and father, on a number of occasions during my childhood and adolescence. No doubt, if I were to remind them of it now, I'm sure that they could relate events to me as if it were yesterday, The story that this layout alludes to has haunted all our lives.

The title on the plaque is: Charity begins at home, and the text on the postcard reads: Uncle Wal stood in front of the fire and said: "well Maree, don't expect charity from us, you've made your bed and now you'll have to lie on it."

The people in the photograph are my mother, my paternal grandparents, my Godfather and his wife (friends of the family whom I knew as Uncle George and Auntie Maureen) and my aunt. My father took the photograph but as he is not here to verify the date, I'm hazarding a guess at mid 1959 because all the ladies are wearing pretty summer frocks and posing with grand dad in the sitting room of the house to which my family moved in 1959. Up until then, my grandmother had run a small ladies and children's clothing and haberdashery shop on the High Street, but just after I was born, she went bankrupt. Nan's generosity was legend. Dad once told me "your grannie was so kind, if a kid came into the shop without a coat on his back, she'd give him one." The sum of money that ruined Nan was really quite small and Grandad could have asked the bank for help but he was a proud man and felt humiliated by the consequences of his wife's kindness: He told me "H.P. (Hire Purchase) was new and all the rage then. If a customer couldn't pay, your grannie would take pity and let them have it on tick." Grandad would have walk the streets to collect overdue repayments, knocking on doors that never opened. One by one, their so-called friends, the beneficiaries of Nan's good nature, all disappeared.

My grandmother was a proud woman who through hard work and determination, had risen from humble beginnings to middle-class respectability. She never recovered from the shame of financial ruin but tried to keep up appearances, working long punishing hours as a waitress at the Council House in Birmingham. I grew up in the shadow of her failure and even as a small child was painfully aware and resentful of the condescension other family members displayed towards my lovely Nan and never grew fond of Uncle Wal who reputedly lectured his sister upon her financial "bed-making".

Should any of you be charmed by the bouquet of pressed flowers in this layout, I must inform you that they are all poisonous. Here's a list of side effects:
Sweet Pea: Upon ingestion, causes permanent paralysis, slow and weak pulse, shallow breathing, pain, weakness, tremors, excitement, and convulsions.
Buttercup: Blistering and ulceration of the mouth when eaten
Larkspur: burning sensation of the mouth and skin, nervousness, headache, weakness, prickling of the skin, low blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, depression, weak pulse, and convulsions. If eaten in large quantities, death may occur in less than 6 hours.
Foxglove: Pain in the oral cavity, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, cramping, and diarrhea.
Crocus: Skin irritant and vesicant. Ingestion causes ulceration of the mouth and severe gastroenteritis.
Morning Glory: Hallucinations, panic, detachment, incoherent speech, cold hands and feet, nausea, vomiting, laughing and crying jags, strong body odor, mental disorder, and suicidal attempts.

Oenone

OENONE

One of the joys of digital art is that in the creation of one image one often finds another one inside it. My work process is actually an act of vandalism as it involves mashing up perfectly lovely digital scrap elements and papers until even their designer's no longer recognise them. This image grew out of and evolved alongside my latest William, John and Jane card. It draws no reference whatsoever from the Oenone of Greek mythology, but from a beautiful Julia Margaret Cameron Albumen print of the same name.

William, Jane & John: The Wages of Conscience

THE WAGES OF CONSCIENCE
Links to other images in this story sequence:

Another Eden
Distillation
River Street 1861: The Shadow and Solace of Temperance

William, Jane & John: The Shadow and Solace of Temperance II

THE SHADOW AND SOLACE OF TEMPERANCE
Reworked

Although I was happy with the first version of this card, as an image, I hadn't explored everything that I'd wanted about this particular episode of the story, so I've spent time re-working it. As usual, I have produced about ten versions, some close to the narrative but conveying different aspects of it through colour, such as the first two posted here. Others, I enjoy simply as images, such as the last of the three.

Credits
Background: paper developed from a photograph that I took inside the old school house in Foy, Herefordshire in 1998 and another in Lille, France in 2000.
Overlaid with:
Paper: Bohemian Krafty by Miss Vivi
Paper: Bohemian August available at Miss Crow's Magickal Emporium
Letter: Bohemian August available at Miss Crow's Magickal Emporium
Wings (recoloured): Altered Wings by Vera Lim
Keyhole: French Market by Laura Deacetis
Torso is extracted and altered from a photograph by Frantisek Drtikol
Ink Splat: The Necessities Collection ~ Note it by Lori Wiley Designs
Photo matte by Holliewood Studios
Texture overlays by Ninian available free at Flickr