All posts tagged: Art Journal

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 1.

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A new year and a new season for Get Messy!  The kick off season for 2018 is the Season of Kindness which is an ideal start to the year in my opinion. I made my journal using a vintage book cover and half ‘warm white’ paper and half ‘cream’ paper.  It has six signatures each with four pages and the book is pretty small at 4 inches x 8 inches. I decided to make the whole season about being kind to myself and my art journaling as I sometimes put pressure on myself to try all the techniques and then I wander off from what I actually want to do.  This journal is going to be full of stuff I want to do and I think it is going to be pretty simple.  I am not an ‘add all the things’ person, so I will be embracing the keep it simple method I like best! The first page has literally three components, a cut out window, a gelli print on vintage ledger paper and words …

My year of art journaling

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All of the journals I filled in 2017 including my daily Moleskine planner. Books I used solely for art journaling. Books I filled as daily challenges, travel journal (Cape Cod Folks), general Moleskine sketchbooks and my daily Moleskine.   I was looking back at my art journals from last year and I was surprised at what I found.  Even though the years seem to fly by, a year ago can seem so much in the past and some of the pages and even the sketchbooks seemed so distant to me. When I was pulling out journals, I concentrated on the handmade ones because that is what I thought I had used all year.  I didn’t realize that I had spent the first three or four months using random sketchbooks including a Moleskine and a  Dylusions book.  I like these sketchbooks a lot and what I made in them, but I really enjoy the handmade books I made for each Get Messy season and for some of the monthly challenges I played along with via Instagram …

My Favorite Art Journal Pages

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I had a wander through some of my art journals this weekend and I was very happy with what I found. Some pages I had forgotten about and I loved coming across them again. Lots of ideas come back and bring new ones at the same time as I see what I did on the pages and remember how I made them. This page is from the Season of Fairytales and is a vintage National Geographic image with wings drawn with a Signo Uniball white pen.  The wings on the seated figure are on the next page and can be seen through the circle I cut in the page. A page from the Season of Colour in my journal made from grocery bags and pages from a 1981 giant atlas found at the library while we were on vacation!  I used a lot of butterflies this season and loved making my own marbled paper. This page also has a cut out to see the butterfly on the following spread. This is a page I made …

Get Messy Season of Connections. Week Three.

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The season of connections over in the Get Messy art journal community is in full swing and I am really enjoying it. I suppose I do use things with connections to me in my journal just by the nature of the fact that I chose it or chose to draw or paint it, but I am more and more fascinated by this as I fill this journal. For this spread I painted and sprayed and splattered the pianola paper to get started.  When I was merrily slapping paint around, I didn’t have a plan for it, I was just making some background paper. Once I saw the tutorial on the Get Messy blog which covered mixed media self portraits, I thought I would give it a go. I grabbed a handful of library cards (I work at the library, so there is that connection) and painted some self portraits on each one.  I do these very quickly with no sketch or outline, so they are all different even though they are painted from only a …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections Week 1.

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The new season over at the Get Messy Art Journal community has just started and I have gracefully dived in headfirst. Today I have had nothing but ideas pouring out of my brain. I am not kidding when I say I am surrounded by index cards and scraps of paper with notes on them! I had no intentions of gathering a pile of supplies together, but it organically happened so I didn’t argue. I may stick with them to make the first pages only, or I may use this base ‘kit’ through the whole season. I have some vintage threads to sew photos and other ephemra into my journal along with some needles which are equally vintage. I like the idea of sewing stuff down and I have already done some machine stitching in my book, inspired by the wonderful Vanessa at Dans Mon Crâne. I love vintage thread spools for the thread and the graphics on top of the wooden spool! I made a new journal for this season and this one is a …

Get Messy Art Journal Season of Fairytales. Week Three.

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Week three of the season of fairytales and I am still enjoying filling my little handmade journal.  What I have learnt is that I like to work bigger, this journal was dictated by the size of the book covers I chose, but every time I open it, I wish it was bigger.  We live and lean don’t we?! I did buy a big fat old book this weekend from the local YMCA book fair, which I want to make into a sketchbook full of watercolor paper, but that is another story which I will share when I make it. At the same book fair I also bought a couple of fairytale books which I am using for collage material.  I seem to have landed on The Frog Prince as my fairytale of choice so I am keeping all my book pages from that story. I have been following the daily prompts on Creative Bug this month and today’s was to make a poem from found words. So I pulled a couple of pages from The …

Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge.

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I finished this challenge a week ago and I really liked filling up my little paperback sketchbook which I made from a vintage paper back book cover and added different papers to the inside. This is the full mini sketchbook I used solely for this project.  The 30 Days of mark making challenge was hosted by Rae Missigman. Here is the second half of my 30 day journey, find the first half here. Day 12. Blotted. I don’t even know what prompt this was for, but I like it!! Day 13 Stippled. Day 14 Fluid. Day 15 Varied. Day 16 and 17 Mirrored and Dripped. Day 18 and 19 Many and Scattered. Day 20-21 Scratched and collaged. Day 22 Torn. Day 23 Lettered. Day 24 Remnants. Day 25 Found. Day 26, 27, 28 Tattered, collected and metallic (can you tell the end of the book was near!) Day 29 and 30 Stitched and closed, I stitched a ribbon around the whole book to close it. Are you participating in any challenges? Monthly? Yearly? Weekly? Do …

Get Messy Season of Colour

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You know when you have a fancy box of chocolates and you want to just dive in and try them all, but you know you need to use restraint and savor each one.  Well, this is how I am feeling this week in the Get Messy Season of Colour.  Firstly there are some great prompts which I want to try out, then I looked at the website last night and there are three new tutorials I have not looked at yet. Yikes! I want to quickly zip into each one and see what it is about, but I also want to allow myself the time to read and look at each one and of course have a go at the artistic wonders that lie within! Before I take a run up and jump off the high board, here is my season of colour journal so far. I have taken a different approach this season, not deliberately, it just happened as do all good things in my art journals. One evening on holiday, the boys all …

Get Messy Season of Contrast Week 6

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The last week of the Season of Contrast has come around so quickly. There have been so many great ideas through the prompts and tutorials, I have not kept up, but that just means a wealth of ideas for me to try in future pages. I am new convert (as of a few hours ago) to paper weaving.  The effects are amazing and I am so new to it, most of what I have done so far (see above) came mainly as a surprise. The process for me is still evolving, but I am loving it so far.  I applied a little planning and then let the papers do the work. For the weaving I used magazine pages and images, a vintage dictionary page and a 1950’s accounts ledger book as well as a painted page from an old book. None of it has made it to my journal yet, the ledger will stay as it is and I may add to the page, but it could be finished now in my opinion. Thanks to …

Get Messy Art Journaling. Season of Contrast Week 1.

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For this first week of Season of Contrast at Get Messy I have taken contrast to the extreme and used only black and white! I have enjoyed working with black ink, black gesso and white gesso so far, with a little addition of Posca pen to make the dots on the ombre spread and the details on the next spread.  I tried some ink blots and then couldn’t stop making them!! I find the ink blots mesmerizing to make and to stare at.  All kinds of things pop out of the page.  I always see lots of faces.   For sketchbooks, I  used my giant Moleskine which opens A2 size, medium Moleskine which is A3 when open and my mini Moleskine which is A5 open.  All the sizes! I really like the small gelli prints of fern leaves in my mini book. Prints were made on vintage dictionary paper and dry wax paper as well as directly into my sketchbooks. I think I will leave some of these prints and blots alone and some I …