Thursday, February 21, 2013

Just a Bit of Art

Our "Secret Garden" has been the theme this month in The Art Journaler Community. Some garden art journal pages:





Mini Book Journal - Find Myself in Him
Gratitude Journal - A Moment of Understanding
Gratitude Journal - Live Gratitude






Saturday, February 9, 2013

Making Books

I like making books. Altered books and three ring binder books and mini travel books. I like making books A LOT! In fact, so much so that I don't necessarily finish the books that I begin ...hmmmm, finishing what I begin ...that's a topic for another post! Anyway, back to making books ...
I have multiple art journal books that I work in at the same time. I think, for me, there are two main reasons that I work in multiple journals: 

1.) I usually have so many things  running around in my head and for some reason I feel the need to categorize them into themes or topics. Thus, multiple journals. I have one for making art and recording thoughts about my "One Word" for the year ~ my Gratitude Journal.  
I have another where I am making art for prompts from The Art Journaler community that I belong to, as well as some random journaling about my journey of self-discovery. I found a book appropriately named "The Examined Life"


2.) I find that I enjoy working in different sizes of journals. My Gratitude journal is 6x9 landscape. The Examined Life altered book is 5x8. When I made my Reverb 2012 album I had found a perfect little book that was 4x7 and I loved the smaller pages.

So I found another small book and started another art journal in it for this year. This one is 4.5x7. So far it just contains random art journal pages.

But probably my favorite size; the one I keep returning to is 7x9. I have done quite a few of this size:
2011 Advent Art Journal
SLJ Class Art Journal
Montana Road Trip from 2011
Because it's my favorite size to work in I have a new 7x9 art journal book in progress.
The beginning of the cover. The watercolor paper I buy has wonderfully heavy cardboard/chipboard back pages. I cut one down for the cover of my new 7x9 art journal binder, then sprayed on some inks and splattered on paint on a piece of patterned card stock. I glued it on the chipboard cover and will decorate it as I am inspired.

Like I said, I like making books and I love spending time filling them with the musings of my heart, one art journal page at a time. It keeps me sane!