A gluey papery journey

Well hi there. Nice of you to pop by. Have a seat and grab a cuppa.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd had a go at art journaling. I've never been a diary/journal writer. But then I've always reflected about things. Actually putting stuff down on paper just seemed a little bit like hard work to me.

I've been hoarding a couple of Julie Kirk's Plundered Pages packs, with the idea that I'd eventually get round to doing something awesomely arty and deep and meaningful with them. Then came the day when I had gathered enough self-confidence, gesso, glue and something to journal about. My daughter has been mithering me for ages about when she is going to get glasses, and her only reason is that she wants to be like me. This made me feel both flattered and worried! Something definitely needed writing down.

So I started with a piece of A4 card cut in half, and stuck two pages from an old dictionary from my Plundered Pages pack (henceforth known as PPP) - I ripped them a little, and turned one upside down.

I then painted some gesso all over the printed pages, using a sponge. (Gesso is pronounced "jesso" - who knew? Not me, as I discovered when I went in to an art shop to buy it!)

I then flicked and splatted some brown watered down ink all over the page, discovering as I did so that it had split into its component colours, pink and murky green.

Now this was unexpected, but like most crafty accidents, totally serendipitous in that it helped me choose a colour scheme! So I pulled out my green, pink and brown ink pads, and grabbed a few stamps and went to it. I stamped mostly in three focal areas on each side, just because that's how I arrange my embellishments etc in scrapbooking. The ink that was stamped on the gesso went a lovely muted colour, another unexpected effect.

 

 

I then flicked a load of pink ink on the page, and stood back to admire my handiwork. There was a bit of empty space in  the middle of the bottom, and so I took a large ornate stamp and stamped it in different directions on each side of the page. This squidged the pink ink quite nicely, adding to the arty farty look of the page (!). I added a few little pink flower stamps to balance out the green and brown clusters...

... then I decided to stick down the pictures I'd torn out of a magazine earlier. I also cut up a children's book page from my PPP, and split up the appropriate phrases to stick on my page.

I then picked up my pen and bravely journalled (journaled?) my actual feelings - go me! The black ink of my favourite handwriting pen looked so stark on the muted page, and so I rubbed some white chalk over it to soften it a little.

 

 

A little outlining of the pasted images, and I was done.

 

 

 

I'm really quite pleased with the finished project. I think it will provide a foil for the project life mass photo display/storage, adding more meaningful day-to-day life stuff. If that even makes any sense!

I was greatly helped in this by reading Julie Kirk's much pinned art journal tutorial and the UKScrappers series on art journaling (thread here). Thank you to those people who put all that effort in!

So, what do you think about Art Journaling? Have you ever tried it? Thought about it? And most importantly, is it spelt with one or two 'l's? I still don't know! Do tell...