mini art journal challenge: week 6

Yes, I made it! This week's prompt was: "love, love, love". Yes it's pretty simple, but I was stuck until last night. I didn't want to make a random love card, I needed true meaning!
I spent my evening last night ringing several people I'd never met regarding olives and sending them for pressing. There are tons of trees laden with olives that are not getting picked around town and we thought we'd spend a week end picking them so we could get our own olive oil. The problem is that there is no press here, so it has to be sent away, and olives have to be pressed within 3 days of being picked otherwise they oxidize...Since it wouldn't be worth driving 3 hours to get under 100kg of olives pressed (the average yield is 12-15%) we need to "team up" with other people who are doing the same thing.
So that is how I ended up ringing around all the local olive experts, being referred from one to the other. After I hung up from the last person, I just couldn't believe how nice and helpful everyone had been, and that reminded me it was one of the things that struck me when I first moved to New Zealand and one of the reasons why I love this country. People are genuinely good, pleased to help and very friendly. So there was my idea for this week's challenge. I love New Zealand. I love the country, I love the people, I love the culture, and of course I love my own little piece of kiwi (represented by the little surfer!).
Of course nothing's perfect and New Zealand's no exception, but I will leave that for another post.

I used some designs found in the paper, big red hearts with the word "LOVE" written in red (can hardly see it with the rest of the collage), on the right I stuck a band of maori Koru design. I cut out both islands then pasted them in the middle, and cut out some major city names and placed them around the map. I also cut out and pasted "New Zeland" twice, a little surfer, a dolphin and some writing that say" We love good karma", "We love whales" and "We love music". Then I put a few layers of varnish (still in the process), to give it a real glossy look. Only downside: I always forget that varnish on newspaper gives it a darker rendering and also reveals the writing on the other side. Maybe I'll remember next time?