Introducing...My Art Journal!

Buddabum buddabum buddabuuumm...  I done started an ART JOURNAL!  "...We so exciiited, we so exciiited..."  I had this adorable turquoise journal, completely blank, on my shelf, that I wasn't really sure how to use because it's so big.  You can see how adorable it is from that picture right up ther'.  See that monster?  So! cute!  Into my art journal, it was transformed!

This post will have a lot of pictures, because I'm showing y'all all the pages I've done so far in my art journal, which is quite a few at this point.  For the first three pages, I cut out pictures and words from magazine pages and sort of made a collage on each page.  This magazine had so much good stuff to cut out!

As with a lot of things, I was inspired (sort of indirectly, if I remember correctly) to start one mainly by Jennie at Little Girl Designs.  She's been the inspiration for a bunch of my art projects, and I'm so thankful for that!

This was specifically inspired by her post on How to Make an Inspiration Board, one of the challenges for her Creative Play Challenge.  What ha' happe'ed wuas, I wanted to make an inspiration board-type-thing, with a theme of things that make me happy, or things that I love, something along those lines, but I didn't want to make it on a board.  What better place to do it, if not on a board, than in an art journal?!  I had been thinking about starting one for a while, so this was the perfect opportunity!

So I cut out a bunch of words and pictures along that theme.  This isn't a great picture because of the glare, but hopefully you can read the words.

Many of these words I didn't use, or haven't used yet, and that's fine!  Their time shall come.

I love this one.  :)

I had been planning to put everything I'd cut out into one collage on one page, but it wasn't working for me.  There were definitely some different color schemes and such going on, and I thought each group needed a page to itself.

I knew I wanted these three pictures together.  They all go so! well! together!

So this is what I came up with...

The next one was just words cut out to make a sentence, and I really like the sentence.  :)

I thought the words needed something behind them, so...I doodled a background.

After gluing them down, I thought they still needed to stand out a little more, so I outlined them.

I like to find creative ways to put in the date, so I squished it in the edge of the doodle like this!  You can also see that I added inside circles to the edging circles, so they look like doughnuts!

Time for the third page!  I love how well each of the pieces go together!  That painting snippet goes perfectly with the words "beautiful spontaneity," don't you think?

These are all the sharpies I used on this page...

Aaand, the finished product!

This was a big flower I made when I was younger, and I had it on my shelf for years.  I kept it, thinking I could someday use it in some art project.  Well, the day finally arrived!  I just glued it in and then wrote a bunch of words around it (and doodled some).  I like to write words...

On the same shelf as the flower, I had this pooh card, which was a thank you from when I gave a painting to a couple in our church.

And, on that very same shelf! was an old birthday card from my parents, that I loved so much I just couldn't put it back in my letter box after I received it!

And you can pull the card out!

And...the other side.  (My pop has nice handwriting.)

This was the handout from my friend's history presentation.  I was going to throw it away with all the other handouts...*clears throat nervously* but then I discovered something crazay!  Where water was spilled on the gray areas, it turned a light green!  So of course I had to play with it some.

The following three pages are cards that me and my little friend from church made when she came to my house.  She drew this one.  (I looked.)

I drew this one.

Aaand, she drew this one!

Alrighty, can anyone guess how I did this one?  Hmm...YES!  I had to get my whole hand painty!  Which is, um, kind of the point!

Look at that.  Ain't it purdy?!  I love getting messy with paint.  :)

These are a couple of origami birds my sister gave me over Christmas break when she was de-cluttering her room.  Her friend made them for her about fifteen years ago, which explains why she wouldn't want to throw them away!

Even though this is a pretty, um, boring page, I like it because it shows that even as a youngun, I liked to come up with new ideas and execute them.  These were scraps of wallpaper glued onto index cards.

This is a drawing given to me years ago by another Maggie!

Ooohhh, okay, this, honey darlin', is sooo cool.  I'm doing a post on this technique in the near future, so I won't explain it here, but trust me, it's sooo cool, and sooo fun!

Look at that texture!

So simple, yet one of my favorites.  :)  I cut letters out of scrap photos I had printed onto regular cardstock.

Whyyy I feel the need to keep some of the things I keep...sometimes passes my understanding.  But nevertheless!  I kept this "list of priorities" and a "texting schedule" I made a few weeks ago, and inserted them into the art journal!  But I first painted the background with turquoise watercolors, and I'm so glad I did.

All opened up!

As you can see by this point, it's less of an art journal, as it was originally meant to be, and more just a perfect place to put miscellaneous flat objects that need a home.  Though I do try to make every page artsy in some way.  Hopefully you can also see that it does not have to be hard!

Does this make you want to start an art journal?