Before I went on holiday to Cape Cod I used the covers of an old book called ‘Cape Cod Folks’ to make myself a journal filled with watercolor paper, handmade blue paper, kraft paper and some pages from an old dictionary.

I am really enjoying using handmade journals because I get to choose the paper, the size of the pages and the overall size of the journal.  Full credit to the Get Messy Bookbinding class for teaching me all I know about making journals.  It really is a great class.  If you want a good book with clear instructions I recommend Esther K Smith’s book called How to Make Books. I have borrowed it many times from the library.

Once I was on vacation, it honestly took me a couple of days to get going in my art journal. It would have been easy to leave it in the drawer. I am so glad I didn’t.

The first spread I made was awful and again I could have left it in the drawer.  Then I casually sketched the whale on the wall of the cottage we were staying in thinking nothing of it.  But the magic was set, I doodled around him which made the page under him because some of the kraft paper was visible I wanted the pages to work together, so I continued to doodle over both pages.

From here on I stuck in stickers from places we had been, tickets and sketches of all kinds of things and of course some ‘messy’ colour pages.

I used my tiny homemade watercolor set  (follow the link to see how I made it) to paint our beach finds from the local beach on this watercolor paper spread. We went for a morning walk on the beach and gathered some bits and bobs which I then painted.

I included this fab photo of a very stern looking lady walking on the beach with her shoes over her shoulder.  I wonder where she is going and who she is with?  This was a photo from the shoe box full I bought from Wellfleet Flea Market.  The blue is from my brayer while I was making some gelli prints.

I took lots of photos of buildings to draw later and this house was one I managed to get down on paper.  I tore the photo of Frida out of the flight magazine (yes, I am that person!)

 

I played with gesso and watercolor to make this page on top of a seascape torn from a magazine.

The beach near where we stayed is covered in oyster shells and I gathered a few and drew these just using a white pen on the kraft paper page.  The opposite page is watercolor paper and on it I painted a pile of rocks using my sumi brush and black india ink.  Painting and drawing piles of flat rocks was one of my favorite things to do in this journal. It is very meditative making pile of flat rocks in different orders and sketching them.

Another building, this one was on a wildlife reserve.  The opposite page is a print out from the Chatham Marconi RCA museum.

I took my gelli plate with me (perfectly normal!!!) and these plants were the perfect subject to print with it.  One side is over a watercolor background and the other is another vintage photo from my flea market haul.

Following a lovely sunset I made this page with a pink sky!

I took lots of art supplies, it was not a compact and bijou art kit!  Heck, I even took a full sized gelli plate!  These are the supplies I used the most.

I bought the high flow acrylics while on holiday and used them lots, I also bought some regular acrylics which I left behind beause I didn’t have space to bring them back (this is where I am pleased that they were bargain craft acrylics).

I found lots of paper to use, mainly at the library where they had a free shelf which was full of all kinds of goodness.

Do you take lots of art supplies on holiday?  Do you use them all?  I really enjoyed filling my art journal and I am pleased I did, even if a page just has a sticker and a doodle, it was worth making it.

Happy Friday x