Spells Journal with Vanessa

One of my favorite parts about the Get Messy Community is the people I’ve met. Vanessa of Dans Mon Crane is one of those awesome people. We were chatting online a few months ago and I asked her if she knew of the Voynich Manuscript. It started a whole conversation about spell books. We decided to make spell journals and swap them. Since V lives on the other side of the world, we decided to only do one swap.

After I worked on mine for a while, I realized that most of the pages dealt with time in some way. So I called mine Time Spells.

When I made Vanessa’s journal, I printed out all these snippets of poetry to go in hers. I had leftovers so some of them made it into my book.

Vanessa’s style is different from mine in some lovely and dramatic ways. I had no idea how they would combine. I messaged her after I worked on one page giddy with excitement over how our styles meshed and complimented each other.

This is hands down my favorite spread. I love the red, yellow, and sea green and how her base layer provides so much structure and uniformity to what I added on top.

My daughter nearly ran off with my journal when she saw this fox. (The line about fox lives is from a poem by W.S. Merwin called Fox Sleep.)

I love V’s use of color and imagery.

The boxes combined with the historical photo on this page really work for me.

I wish you could see the sparkles on this page. V used iridescent watercolors so it is just magical.

This is the other page that I adore. That phrase is can be either lovely or creepy. I like the ambiguity of it.

Look at that witch that Vanessa stitched! It is amazing!!

I am thrilled with the way this journal turned out. Thank you, Vanessa, for sharing this with me! If you want to see the one I sent to Vanessa and how she made it hers, check out her blog to see it.