All posts tagged: Handmade Journal

Sketchbooks

Published by

I have been working and practicing in my sketchbooks a lot more this year. While I am still in love with mixed media and art journal type pages, I am really trying to improve my sketching, in an actual drawing type way! I have signed up for some classes, a couple I have completed and some (ok many) are in process and some (ok too many) are waiting to be started. Are you a class taker? Do you feel they benefit your skill building? I find that some do and some don’t. I particularly enjoy classes which are vague enough to let you run with your style and preferences and provide ideas and inspiration. Classes I try to avoid (no always successfully) are the ones where you end up with a very similar body or piece of work to everyone else in the class including the teacher. One of my favourite ways of working and learning in my sketchbook is the weekly (Friday at various times) art club held on Instagram live by The Good …

Get Messy Season of Story Week 5

Published by

For the Season of Story over at the Get Messy Art Journaling community, I made a journal which I love and I am super proud of and then I left it at home when I went on holiday to England for two weeks.  I left it because I didn’t want it to get squashed or damaged or worse, ignored.  All of these things would  most likely have happened to it, so I am pleased I didn’t take it. However, what also happened was that I didn’t do much of anything in the way of art journaling in my new journal for another couple of weeks afterwards.  It is a chunky little number and it needs to be filled! This week I saw a bird egg which I decided to paint in order to capture the colour of it, then I searched my old photos for suitable candidates for the season of story.  At the same time I pulled out some old National Geographic magazines which I had recently bought at an estate sale and I …

Get Messy Season of Kindness Week 3

Published by

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 Connections. Week Three.

Published by

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 Season of Connections. Week 2.

Published by

I have been exploring connections of all kinds in my art journal this past two weeks since the Season of Connections started over at Get Messy. Once I started thinking about it, connections are everywhere, physical and abstract. I have a strong connection to nature, so there is usually a botanical theme to my journal somewhere.  It may be flower shapes or organic leaves or a landscape or two. So far in this journal I have printed leaves with my gelli plate onto dry wax paper and stuck them in, I have stitched leaves and painted them with watered down sumi ink. A completely random connection appeared when I printed a leave on a page from an old dictionary and when I tore it up to stick down, I noticed that I had printed on a page which had ‘folk dance’ at the top. This is an immediate connection to my maternal grandparents who used to take me folk dancing when I was a kid.  I loved it and have very fond memories of folk …

‘I Like’ Friday

Published by

Lots of things to like this fine Friday! A modest trip to Art Mart to get some book tape.  Came out with deep violet high flow acrylic, gold fluid acrylic a new sepia pen and a Jon Snow key chain (for my teen).  Any art shop which sells Funko Pop key chains has my vote! Moon phase stickers from Stickerdoodles. I keep borrowing this fabulous book from the library, it might be time to buy it! Stunning cigarette cards from the gorgeous shop of Beets and Birch.  I adore these cards as I already have lots which my grandma gave me.  Mine are a mix of tea cards and cigarette cards. They were given away in each pack of tea or cigarettes until the 1970’s I think.  Grandma kept all hers and gave them to me in the 1980’s carefully kept in a ‘British Home Stores’ bag! I am very pleased to have these cards to add to my collection. The new Art Journaling magazine has two of my Get Messy friends inside it’s covers …

Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge, my journal so far.

Published by

I am joining Rae Missigman again this summer for her Art Marks 30 Day Summer Challenge which started on July 15th. Encouraged to work small for this adventure, I made a little sketchbook using kraft paper and textured paper with a Ray Bradbury paperback for the cover.  I put lots of pages in it so that I could do more pages as I feel inspired and hopefully fill it up. Well, I am nearly halfway through my book and only on day/prompt 12 out of 30, so I am excited that I will fill my little book up!  Yay. Day 1. Dense. Day 2 and 3. Scrawled and Curved. 4. Geometric. 5. Ruled. I had to use part of this vintage ledger page, it is ruled and someone has written Fish and Chips on it! 6. Wide. This wide washi tape was on an envelope my lovely friend send me, I peeled it off before I even opened the letter! 7. Interrupted. I interrupted this girl with a tree. 8. Blurred. Illustrations from a discarded …

Get Messy – Season of Colour Week 4.

Published by

Lots of colour play this week, using a few colours and using lots.  I learnt that I don’t love using yellow! I painted on these vintage library catalogue cards using a very marvelous tutorial and idea from Julia via the Get Messy members blog. What to do with the cards now? I added two of them to a page I started in my Season of Colour journal (made from paper bags and atlas pages).  This page was a fighter, I almost painted ‘I hate this page’ all over it at one point (I am not even a little bit joking!). But I persevered and after a slice of orange in my corner, I jumped back into the ring and finished the page. I am so pleased that I didn’t scribble all over the page in a tantrum! Happy Thursday x

Get Messy Art Journal. Art 101. Week Five.

Published by

Half magazine and half drawing. Ten Daffodils. Go with the flow, gestural yoga drawings. All I needed for this week’s art journal pages  was this simple folded journal and the ideas from the Get Messy Art Journal members blog. I had other plans for journal pages but I was completely smitten by this journal idea and wanted to fill it up (yes I know it only has a handful of pages!!). To make the journal, I used a page from the giant dictionary I bought a couple of weeks ago at an estate sale.  I like that it has pictures in with the print of the dictionary and I didn’t deliberately pick the page with ‘positive’, but I am pleased I ended up with it.  To be honest I pulled this page because I liked the Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish illustration which is on the daffodil page. This was a fun project and I have a full journal! Happy Thursday x

‘I Like’ Friday. The mini journal edition.

Published by

I started working in one of my mini journals today,  and I love it love it love it!  Each page is  a little quick delve into colour, collage and drawing.  I have used acrylic paints which dry nice and quickly, so I can work through the journal without having to wait ages for paint to dry. I started with my new friend, the ‘owlat’ which came about in a previous page and I thought the image looked like a owl crossed with a cat.  I drew this one more deliberately, guiding the triangles as I went. The fold out pages are fun and I tried to make them work with each other and the pages around them by adding a similar flower motif in pen (I used white Uniball and a blue Micron). I am becoming very interested in old photos as well as postcards and this is a copy of a vintage photograph.  I wonder who she was? Collage is a new addition to my art journaling and I am enjoying using snips of …