Created for the Steering the Pot challenge hosted by Agata. We were asked to create something soul related that speaks to us. I decided to create a layout about a mystical shamanic journey. A shamanic journey is an indigenous spiritual practice found in many cultures around the world, where the person enters an altered state of consciousness, and goes on an inner soul journey for healing and guidance. Such an inner journey feels very appropriate for finding our way through this tricky times.

To create this layout, I started with the photo of the shamanic warrior woman on a white 12x12 canvas, and I clipped it to clipping mask 1 (flipped horizontally) from et designs' Raven's Garden Clipping Masks. To do this, I set the opacity of the photo to 50% on a layer above the clipping mask and moved it around until I liked the alignment. Then I restored the opacity to 100% and clipped it to the mask of the face and eye. Then I took a beautiful raven brush from Playing with Brushes and snuggled it up to them.

Next, I took the photo of the woman in the fog and repeated a similar procedure to clip it to clipping mask 2. Then I positioned that pair in a diagonal, with the upper right corner underneath the raven.

At this point, I liked where I was headed, so I wanted to pick a background paper to inform and inspire me. I looked at the papers in the Raven's Garden Bundle, but I wanted a lighter toned background than the ones from this kit. So I turned to a different kit from the same Color Play collection - Joyce Paul Designs' Fallen Echoes and picked one of her Artsy Papers. I placed this behind my layers and then moved everything I'd created so far until I liked how it all lined up.

Next I added two leaf brushes and a thistle-like botanical brush to the left side for visual interest and lowered the opacity of all of them to blend them in. I also flipped a doodle brush that looks a bit like handwriting, lowered the opacity, and placed it between the raven, woman in the fog, and the botanical.

To warm up the layout a bit, I created the vertical floral cluster on the right, with a bit of leather cord as a bow at the bottom. Once these warm tones and dimensional elements were added to the right, they needed something on the left for balance. So I added some warm toned paint, a warm toned and olive toned circular mark, and a single dimensional flower. Again, I lowered the opacity of the paint and circular marks to blend them.

Finally, I added a bit of splatter paint from another Color Play kit - Fall Afternoon by natali designs. This is what I love about bundles, collections, and kits from the same Color Play collection at Oscraps - they all go together beautifully. Everything in this layout is from the Raven's Garden Bundle except for the background paper and the splatter paint.