Art Journal Everyday
Last Friday I posted about starting an art journal and I have definitely been bitten by the art journaling bug. I love that it’s something so ongoing and that a little bit everday makes a BIG impact on the final results. I’m definitely loving how just this little bit of creative energy and production is blossoming in to a desire and need to create other things more often. It’s a new and nice change. I was feeling in a bit of a rut and now it feels like I’ve hit an up swing.
Today I wanted to share two pages. One that I finished that I showed off last Friday in it’s incomplete stage and a new one that I finished just today.
This page started off being just a blank untreated journal page that I sprayed with liquid watercolor in a Mini Mister. After that I went back in and doodled in the areas that I had masked off and painted the wording in acrylic paint. Once I had it all decorated I wrote around the edges… it’s a bit tough to read the actual sentences at this point as I turned the page as I wrote so it’s really a big jumble of words but I didn’t really intend to read it again… I was more or less doing a word vomit on the page of creative hesitance and stalling that I needed to get out to be productive with this. Let me just say it was VERY effective. 🙂
As I was doing some digging about art journaling and just wandering the web looking at what others have created I ran across Sarah Whitmire’s blog about Art Journaling that had a huge list of prompts to get you started. The very first one talked about claiming your journal. I really liked this idea so I took what she suggested and modified it a bit to suit me and this is what I came up with.
For this page I made a base of old dictionary pages that are attached to the inside cover of the journal with gloss gel medium (I prefer matte but I used what I had) then I gessoed over the pages. Next I stamped the words “This book belongs to” using individual letter stamps I found at Micheal’s for $2.50. Next I drew out my name in pencil and painted it in with acrylic paints and outlined it with a Sharpie poster paint pen. To give it some depth I used Inktense pencils to add a shadow around the letters. I used the same pencils to continue writing my name. I added a few more in Sharpie and a regular pencil and a border around the outside. Overall I like how it came out. It was definitely a good way to get started on ‘claiming’ my journal.
After seeing my journal Evey wanted one of her own. At first she wanted me to make it for her and I declined that offer and said I would get it started for her but she had to continue it herself AND she had to add to any pages that I made for her so this what I started her off with:
These are both two page spreads. Now she just needs to get started making them hers!
For more information on art journal everyday visit Julie Balzer’s blog!
Psst… thanks Anna Maria for your comment last time with the links to the Youtube videos. Those solved my thin paper problems right off and they were VERY inspiring!
If you art journal… what are your favorite stamps for journaling?