All posts tagged: Get Messy Art Journal

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 3

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I noticed these strands of seeds on the ground when I was walking home from my pilates class this week and picked a few up thinking hey, they would be good to draw.  Yes, this is how my mind works! I carried them carefully home in my gloved hand in the rain and it turns out that they were a lovely addition to my season of kindness journals. This season I am making a concerted effort to let myself experiment and do whatever comes to mind in my journals.  If I want to make another journal, I shall, if I want to use the same quote on two pages, no problem. I don’t often use quotes or words in my journal, but I have had this one from JM Barrie written down ever since I read ‘Wonder‘  to my boys a few years ago and I made a note of it in the diary for future use. I am very guilty of doing ‘what I think is the correct thing’ sometimes instead of what I …

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 2.

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  I am enjoying this Get Messy season so far, and working in my little hand made journal is a good place to be. However, I seem to have started a trend last season when I made a small journal and then I made a big one to give myself more options and ended up filling them both (bear in mind that I don’t put hundreds of pages in my books!). Following this apparent new tradition, I made another journal this season too!  I really do like to work in different sizes and on different paper when the mood/idea strikes.  For my new book I removed the text block from a children’s cook book and replaced it with hot press watercolour paper and a couple of pages of brown paper from a grocery bag. The new sketchbook (on the right) is a book I found in a thrift shop and it is the American version of my first cook book when I was a kid in England. I remember making food from it and I …

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 …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Nature Week 5.

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I have been busy with my gelli plate this season, I just keep wanting to print flowers!  No bloom is safe when I get my paints out! Some of the pages were printed before I bound this book and some I have printed over collage elements, like the last page shown here where I stuck down the periodic table and butterfly and then printed some flowers on top. Nearly as popular as my gelli plate has been my sumi brush and black sumi ink which I have used to make patterns over pages. I love the depth of the deep black ink when applied with a nice thick sumi brush. I have been enjoying using the Jane Davenport Inkredible inks which smell as good as they look!  I used ‘Limeade’ on the page with the butterfly and gave it a little spray with my water bottle. I am ashamed to say that I have not followed any prompts this season, I have just been jollying along in my journal filling it up a little each …

Get Messy Season of Nature Week 2.

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  It is the second week of the Season of Nature in the Get Messy community and I have got started in my hand made sketchbook.  I have been gelli plate printing seed pods and leaves and dipping pages in hand made ink from black walnuts and red cabbage. The page I enjoyed making the most is the sketches of the dried seed pods and I like it next to the printed same seed pods. So far, a lot of the pages are just started, a print or a colour added.  I like to do this just to be rid of the dreaded blank page, then I can come back and add to the page or spread later. If you want to see more Season of Nature art, go to #getmessyartjournal on Instagram and if you want to see what I have been making I use #catseatdogsgetmessy. Happy creating and happy Thursday x

Handmade sketchbook for the Season of Nature

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I am beginning to get a bit obsessed with making books!  I love to make all the sketchbooks with different papers in different sizes with fold outs and accordions.  The more I make the more ideas I get for another one or two or three. We are about to start the new season over in the Get Messy Art Journal community and it is going to be The Season of Nature.  I found a book called ‘A Field Guide to Animal Tracks’ not long ago and thought it would be perfect to make into a sketchbook for The Season of Nature. Once the pages were out I was ready to go! I made two signatures and stitched one to each inside cover of the book so they open away fro each other.  I used pamphlet stitch to fasten them onto the edge of the cover. I have made a pretty backwards book which started by stitching the papers onto the opposite side than expected, but I like the way the two books are working together …

Get Messy Art Journal. Season of Connections week six.

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The last week of another fab season of Get Messy Art Journal rolls around and I have nearly filled my handmade journal, just a few pages to complete or finish. This week I used lots of collage elements which I don’t usually use so that was good to try, I also got inspired by a page of splatters and I changed the cover of my journal from a giant sunflower to plain brown paper.  Much as I love the sunflower (and it will house a new sketchbook), it just was not sitting with the sketchbook I am creating inside it. The beauty of making your own journal! This is some of the pile of collage materials I gathered together. As the page developed I organically began to incorporate the fold outs and the pages either side into the spread. In the end I had covered four pages with various flaps! Now I want to start this process at the beginning of a sketchbook with a variety of paper and page sizes and incorporate each page …

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 …