Handmade Journals

One of my favorite things to do is create painted papers for backgrounds and other uses.  Over the past week, I've been adding acrylic paint layers to a 12x12 piece of watercolor paper.  In addition to making marks in the base coat of gesso, I created texture on this piece with molding paste through a stencil.  Both sides of the paper are painted because it was my intent to use the finished paper to make covers for a journal.

Planning ahead for an art trip this Fall, I wanted a fresh watercolor journal ready to go.  I have made several handmade journals in the past and prefer them to the "boughten" kind.  I can use my favorite papers, choose any size I want, and have fun with the process!!

In this new journal, I put a mix of papers -  Arches cold press #140 lb., some Rives BFK, and some Stonehenge sketching paper.  One 22x30 sheet can be torn into 16 sheets that are approximately 5 x 7.5 inches, which about the usual size of a purchased journal.  This journal has a total of 36 sheets.

I like spiral binding because it allows the journal to lie flat, so I use the "Bind-it-all" machine. Although the purchase of that gadget seemed rather expensive at the time, even with a discount coupon, it has nearly paid for itself.  I've made several journals and notebooks for myself and as gifts and have even sold a couple of them.  At right are the ones I'm currently using - a large (8x10) nature journal, a small pocket notebook, and two watercolor journals.

Another plus to binding your own journals is that you can take them apart, take pages out, change the order, or put more pages in and then re-bind them.  No more anxiety about messing up an art journal!  Yay!

Ready for April

April made a fool out of me on Friday and started a day early, at least for where I was with my art calendar for the Calendar Challenge.  Thank goodness today is Saturday and a catch-up day!  Here is my completed March calendar and the April calendar prepared for a wonderful month of art and adventures.  Recognize the patterned paper I used?  Yep!  It's the insides of business envelopes.  Love how there are so many patterns.

Visual Journal Workshop 2

In the month of March, Strathmore offered the second of three on-line workshops on visual journaling.  Instructor Linda Blinn gave us some really great ideas for making journals not only artful, but also unique.  The classes are on-going, and you can still take them if you are interested.  Click here to check them out.

I started with a Strathmore 5x8 watercolor journal (which Michaels has started carrying).  Our first lesson gave us a start at making the journal unique and practical by making pockets on the inside front and back covers and making some stepped pages and foldout pages.

Here is the inside front cover and first set of stepped pages in my journal.  I used a business envelope with windows for this pocket.

Here is the inside back cover with pockets.














I made one extended page that folds out, on which I pasted photos of some of the artwork I have done in the past year.  This page was inspired by a typo that I noticed in one of the Somerset publications. :)

Here it is with the extension folded in.

And here is what is inside the fold:



You may have noted that the photos are quite small and not proportionate to their actual sizes.  I printed them with my new toy - a Canon Selphy printer, which has a setting to generate photocollages on 4x6 paper.  I cut out each of the individual shapes for this journal page.  The printer does a really great job - the color is quite true and the photo process is similar to a photo lab print.

Linda gave us tips on prepping our page backgrounds by using stencils and masks with spray paint as well as rubber stamps and other items to make texture.  Here are a couple more pages that I have made in her class:

For this set of pages that demonstrates using positive and negative images, I used an illustration from a magazine to cut a mask.  I wrote inside the negative image and outside the positive image. 

This set of pages is ready for journaling.

Final Pages from Visual Journaling Workshop

The on-line workshop on Visual Journaling (see previous post for links) has come to the final lesson and final homework.  Since the lessons were spread over four weeks, I had time to start and finish 5 pages.  Here are the finished products:

This one was a little out of my comfort zone, but I found this cool illustration of a face and magnifying glass in a magazine ad and decided to try to do something with it.  This is more along the lines of the example provided in Pam Carriker's lessons.

Materials used for these pages included:  gesso, acrylic paint, collage items (magazine material, scrapbook papers, and photocopies of my own art) charcoal and graphite pencils, oil pastels, chalk pastels, gel pens, and poster paint pens.  (Isn't it wonderful to find uses for all the cool art materials and supplies?!)

Journaling Workshop

One of my art priorities for the month of January was to start a new art journal.  Coincidentally, a couple of blogs that I follow mentioned a free on-line workshop sponsored by Strathmore Papers and taught by Pam Carriker, so I checked into it and signed on.  A new lesson is posted each week and we are now in week two.  (By the way, it's not too late to join the class, if you are interested.  Check it out here)

Because we have had snow and ice for the past week or so, I've had plenty of home time to watch the videos and do the two lessons.  In fact, I finished lesson two the first day it was posted and decided to start another page while waiting for the next lesson.  I believe the art work is nearly done, but the journaling part is still to come.

 The focus of the class is recycling our old journal art work by making photocopies of pages and using that art work in a different way to make a new page.  My old journal pages are mostly nature sketches and were not what I needed to follow the class instructions, so I improvised by photocopying a magazine picture for my first lesson.  I cut around the figure and pasted it down on a background that I had photocopied from one of my acrylic abstracts.

For the second page, I scanned a watercolor sketch that I had done in the manner of  Picasso's "La Lecture" and printed it in black and white for this recycling.  We use oil pastels for color and charcoal and graphite pencils for shading.  Gesso is used to blend the images and background and prepare the surface for journaling.

Come join the class.  It's fun!!