The Stages of A Journal Page

 Hi there everyone! Friday is here again-already! It is the last day of the kids at my school so YAHOO!!!
BIG BIG SMILE!
They leave at at 11:30 today, and  later on this afternoon there's a cookout at one of my friend's homes. Its a little get together to celebrate surviving  and almost completing another school year.
 Too bad I have 3 teacher work days next week to make up excused snow days and having to fulfill my contract obligations! But I am not really complaining because my summer break is really almost here.
(Just teacher days, although they can be boring, are at least much more low key and less structured.)
Today I have another journal page to show you, but not sure its even good enough to post on my blog.

You know how there are pages you make that you may not really like but they are finished and decent enough to post.
Not this page!
This page is a hot mess! I like the background but there are too many images and those images just get lost on the page. I think I would leave the cow skull and the little bright painted southwestern motif image, but there are too many other distracting elements on this page.
So  my nit-picky self had one of those salvage the page ideas.
Maybe I just need to paint it over!

So I did that- I painted over the main body of the page in brown,  then I journaled with a Sharpie, and  stenciled the clouds in white. Still not happy, I took some blue paint and applied it with a very very wet paint brush. I like how that worked! It gave the page some much needed texture. I then restamped the cowgirl, the cow skull and the southwestern motif on paper and fussy cut them out. I added the word using some thick cardboard letter stickers.

It still needed work. I added the doodle around the edge. I rubbed some paint over the spirit word to make it stand out a little more, and I used a Lego which I painted and then stamped. It gives me these cool little circles. We are getting there.

But to me, it still needed something.

Man, I am being too picky or what?

So my question became, how much time do you put into a journal page? Until you are really happy with it? Until you are satisfied? Until you are ready to toss it in the trash? (But I always feel guilty about doing that! Like I could salvage every attempt.)

After looking at it and thinking about it a bit, I decided it needed something around the edge, so I dug out this cool horse stamp I have. 

And now I am finally happy with it.

Sometimes a simple journal page becomes way too complex.

Hope everyone has some fun weekend plans, and if you're a dad, hope you have a Happy Father's Day.

I think we are  going boating tomorrow with my daughter and her boyfriend, since Sunday it is suppose to rain. But in this world one never really knows what will happen.

Linking this page to Paint Party Friday. Thanks once again to Eva and Kristen for hosting! 

Stop by and check out all the interesting pieces people post!

I am also linking this to Art Journal Journey. This month's theme is masculine and feminine, so stop by there also to see some interesting (and really well done) journal pages.

And I have to post this video! Take a peek if you have a few minutes. This is from my school's graduation that I was at last Friday night. It was an amazing speech and "more" that has gone viral. Its been on Ellen DeGeneres's website, Ryan Seacrest's web page, its been on the news, People magazine., plus a bunch of other places with over a million hits. Just absolutely amazing! And the speech before Colin's was so good we didn't think he could top it, but who knew we would be proven so wrong. But I should have known, because Colin is one amazing graduate!

We've been talking about it all week at school!
Enjoy! Hope you have something fun planned this weekend and of course,
thanks for stopping by to visit my blog.