A dream within a dream

Hello all!  One of these days I'll get my Art Journal Journey page done near the beginning of the month... not this month though.  I've been procrastinating, but I'm finally there with something for Eileen's Dreams or Wishes theme.  And dreaminess seemed to link up in my head with the Bokeh effect - the out of focus bubbles of light you can create in photography.  That's the theme over at Country View Challenges for October, so this page spread was inspired by linking the two challenge themes.

Bubbles or circles became something of a motif, and that circularity is reflected in the words I've used to... the way dreams have of taking you round in circles to where you began, or of seeming to take you round in circles, yet you find yourself somewhere completely new when you get there.






Or even daydreaming, where you suddenly see those other versions of yourself - other lives, other possibilites... the road not travelled.













And since my daydreams usually take me to a place of monastic peace, an overgrown garden full of ivy clambering on stone walls, that's the location for this dreaming page.

Its real-life location is within the pages of my France Papillon altered book.













I started with some gesso, and then texture paste and a 13Arts garland stencil, embossed with Duck Egg powder.  It seemed a good starting point for whirling dreams.














Later on, it got a bit of extra inking to try to dull down the glossy shine a bit, but the texture and dimension really work nicely.














The double Paper Doll idea arrived next... the dreamer and her dream-self, echoing across the page with dreamlike words attached.  And I added some of the gorgeous PaperArtsy grasses, stamped in Bundled Sage Distress Oxide.

Looking back, I really like this fairly spare white stage... it has an emptiness and room for meditation.  But it didn't feel "finished", so I knew there had to be more to come.














First of all, those Bokeh bubbles.  I used a Simon Says Stamp stencil and Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass and Broken China.














The Tim Holtz architecture stamps are embossed in Earthtone Pepper powder.















I really like how the dreamer is framed by the Gothic archway.














I added the extra ruined pillar as an afterthought (as you'll see if you look closely at the ivy leaves... I managed to wipe the powder away but not all of the Watering Can ink underneath).













The distant dream-self has wings... who hasn't dreamed of being able to fly?
















And the cogs and gears provide additional circular shaping, keeping the eye moving around the page...















... as well as reflecting the cogs and gears of the mind processing the day's events through dreaming.













Edgar Allan Poe's words seemed the right choice for a page about the circularity of dreams within dreams.  They're from PaperArtsy EAB07 Dreaming & Doing.








I hope these pages have given your imagination something to dream about.  I'll be back in a few days with a special Guest appearance and some more autumn crafting, but for now I'll wish you all a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you again soon.

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.
Neil Gaiman

I'd like to share this in the Dreams or Wishes theme at Art Journal Journey
And at Country View Challenges the October theme is Bokeh