In 2013 I made my first art journal. I'd seen some youtube-artist working in theirs and thought "wow, I love that" and...well. I art journaled.
One of the things I liked about it, is how...imidiate it is? Like...you just make something, and work in layers and don't have to care about how what you make ringt now impacts what you have already made or are going to make on the next spread. I mean, some artists probably prefer to protect old spreads by having some kind of protective layer of paper or plastic between the old and current spreads, but I find that having the new impact the old makes it more exciting, somehow. I have punched holes in pages, wich gave the old spread something new, and the next spread annother element to work with.
I realize that I maybe went too fast on this...this is my first journal when it was all fresh and new:
I made it from scrapbooking paper, cardstock from an old cerial box and some kind of string. Every spread is a combination of two different kinds og scrapbooking paper except from the centers of the signatures, but that's just how making books work. When making this, I knew nothing about bookbinding, and didn't have a clue how wide the book would become as I worked my way through it. But that's a whole 'nother story. I journaled. A lot. For a while. Then I forgot about it and didn't for about a year. And then I journaled some more, and forgot about it for a while again, and we've had this on again/off again relationship ever since. In 2018, I realized that the old journal (the one pictured above) had too many signatures in it, and I had to take some of the last ones out to make a new book. So I did. I knew more about bookbinding this time and were able to make something that I probably don't have to alter later.
And so I journaled for a while.
Recently, I had a friend help me reorganize my creative space, and we found my journal.
It had been about two years since I'd done any art journaling, and I decided to take it up again. It's pretty low stakes, and I have been trying to get my artsyness back, that is what this blog is about after all. Sometimes I journal and then draw/paint/glue stuff over it, other times, I don't journal, and some times I journal on top of the art, it all depends on what I'm journaling, really.
It has been feeling like I'm just repeating old stuff, but I've been working on not feeling bad about it.
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| An old spread from 2013 |
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| My latest spread |
Comparing these two spreads, I can see that this artist went to design school in between the making of the first and last one,
I've been using the paper that makes the spreads as a creative prompt, like...it will inform what I'll make the spread about. Or I'll just paint or glue stuff over it so you can't see the underlying paper when it's finished.
Me from two (or so) years ago decided to give her future self even more prompts, and put stuff inbetween pages to use on the spesific spreads. I like that. There are stickers allready sticked onto the pages, pieces of paper and other scrapbookingessentials just put inbetween the pages. It's fun. Don't remember why I did it, but it's fun.
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On my newest spread, I decided to sew some buttons in there. Yes, sew them in, not just glue them. I hate the look of buttons that aren't sewn onto the thing they are on. What does that look like on the other page where the thread has gone though, you ask? Well. This is how it looks on the spread that came before it:
On this spread past me has put in some letter stickers as well. Don't know what I'll make of it, but we'll see. When it's done, you might not even see the thread.7
Art journaling is chaos creating if I ever saw it, and it makes me happy, but it doesn't feel as effortless as it did in 2013. I've been wondering what happened. It might just be that I'm rusty. Or I might have lost the effortlessnes. Either way; time will show.
