30 journals 30 days!

Woohoo! Today's the day! I've been waiting to post this. Connie over at Dirty Footprints Studio has extended her "30 journals, 30 days" project and is allowing artists everywhere to fill out this interview about their own art journaling experience! If you get a chance, make your way over to her website to find links to many lovely blogs and tons of inspiration! I hope you enjoy my interview, it was very fun to write.

•How long have you been Art Journaling?

I started a journal back in 2005 when I was still in high school.. however at that time I was too worried about making things look nice that I never really let loose and just played freely. I didn't use any paint or other materials, I was just keeping it real simple, when my muse could have done much more! In late 2007 I discovered the amazing SuziBlu and all my preconcieved notions of what a journal was "supposed" to be flew out the window.. I began creating like a mad woman! I was so inspired to just do my own thing and felt that it was meaningful too. That same original, "playing it safe" journal that I started in high school evolved into a colorful, expressive book of my life. I'll never forget my beginning art journal days.. I miss them!

•How has Art Journaling impacted, changed, or enhanced your life?

I feel that discovering my passion for art journaling has really helped me become more in touch with myself and embrace my creativity. My life is so much more rich and meaningful because of it. I really did not have a main hobby that I could turn to before I started journaling. I always enjoyed crafts and anything creative when I was younger but it was never part of my daily life - with art journaling I feel like I have found my niche and am totally in my element! It really was like finding a missing part of myself.

It has opened up a whole new world for me: I disovered my love for mixed media art and I am now doing paintings and learning to draw- things I never thought I'd be doing. I'm also just beginning to teach local mixed media and art journaling classes this summer! I now call myself an artist because of it. :)

•What are a few of your favorite Art Journaling materials?

Acrylic and watercolor paints, ribbon, buttons, tape, portfolio oil pastels (they are great when you add water to them), any collage materials/ephemera, and sakura gel pens - which I need more of! Also some nice tunes to listen to are a must!

•Who are some of your favorite Art Journalers?

Suzi Blu
Friday Eudaemonism (Hannah)
Milliande
Tam
Ruby Claire

•What kind words of encouragement would you say to an Art Journal newbie?

Just have fun with it. Don't get mad at yourself if you dislike a page you created, just think of it as an experience and a process. Even though I've been journaling for awhile I am still often a perfectionist, but I try to ignore it and just be accepting of what I made. Everything you do in your journal is meaningful... seriously! Don't be scared to be YOU and just let loose, why be hard on yourself? Be your own best friend. When I first started I wasn't sure if things I were creating/writing were "worthy" enough, but when I look back on past pages, I like reading things I wrote and seeing pages that are important to my life. Also, don't push yourself to journal if you aren't in the mood. Do it when you feel inspired! Don't feel like you have to have a certain style either.. I think it's more interesting when you can make all different types of pages and try out new things.

•Where can we contact you...give us some link LOVE!!

Youtube
Flickr
Twitter
Right here at My blog :)

•Short Bio.

I am 21 years old and a recent college grad from southern New Hampshire. I have a degree in elementary education and when I eventually start teaching I hope to incorporate art into my classroom in many ways. Right now I am pretty immersed in the art world.. I am planning on trying to sell some of my art and see where that takes me. I come from a pretty creative household- my mom makes jewelry and my sister loves music and plays guitar. Lately my head is always spinning with new projects I want to try! I am currently learning how to draw realistic faces and want to experiment with photography too. Some other things I love are postcrossing, new age/world music, writing, traveling, and dancing (Zumba)!

Art journaling today

My weakness - gotta have it. ;)

What should I do on this canvas? I would love to hear your ideas. I've neglected it for awhile.. it needs some love!

Tomorrow I'm going to start taking pictures for my moleskine for the sketchbook project.. so excited. I think I'm going to go downtown, to a park, and anywhere else I think might be interesting to take photos in the city. I got an email saying they shipped my sketchbook today! Weeeee. Look for another post soon. Create create create!

Projects and postcards

The past few days I had been thinking about signing up for the sketchbook project and today I finally did it! After viewing the different themes that they have available on the website, I came up with an idea for the theme "If you lived here.." which is the one I ended up choosing. Lately I had been thinking about using my own photography in my art journals since I haven't really much before. I thought about driving around my city and taking artsy pictures of anything- buildings, people, scenery, etc. When I saw that theme I immediately thought of this idea and thought it would be really cool to include these in the sketchbook and kind of tell a story about where I live. I can collage, sketch and do other art on the pages around these pictures. I'm excited because it's a way to experiment with photography and put it to good use! I think it's exciting to create a journal for an audience and I think I'll have a lot of fun with the theme.. I am planning on going out and taking pictures soon and getting them developed. I will definitely post about the process here.


So, if you haven't heard about the project, go the website and read about it, it's really great. I almost didn't sign up because I didn't think I'd have the time, but then I just got to thinking, there's no better time than right NOW to do what you want to do. What if I didn't get a chance to do it later on? And I just got some extra graduation money. So $25 is worth it to have this great experience of creating art and sending it out into the world (even though I don't really have a job right now and have about a million dollars worth of student loans to pay back.. but you know.. live your life, right?!). :)

My "job" right now is actually teaching some local art classes in my city -Manchester, NH! My very first class is this Thursday, the 29th and it's called "Postcard Pizazz" - I'm teaching how to make mixed media postcards. The class will focus on creating different layers using paint, paper, stamps, etc like the ones you see here. I just did a practice class for my mom and sister today which helped a lot. I'm nervous but I'm going to try and just have fun with it and hope it goes well. I'm doing a second postcard class on August 12th and then an art journal class on August 20th. The owner even mentioned that I could possibly have an art journal CLUB!! That's like my dream. The classes are at a small craft shop and studio, Talk Paper Scissors. The studio is beautiful, there are pictures on the website and there is an abundance of materials that are are available to use during classes! If you happen to live in the area and would be interested in taking my class, please check out the website, there's a lot more information there. It will be a fun and relaxing environment to get messy and creative !
I got started making my own postcards because of postcrossing.com - an amazing website to check out if you like to send and receive mail! Mail art is so fun and it's great when you receive a message saying someone found your card in their mailbox and you made their day. ^_^ The cards pictured are ones I have made and sent to people around the world.

Oh - later this week I am going to post an art journal interview here that I filled out about myself for Connie's "30 Journals 30 days" at Dirty Footprints Studio - she is extending her project and allowing anyone who does art journaling to fill out the questions and post them on their own blog, and then you can link it on her website. It was really fun to answer them.. check back for that soon!

Found papers art journal

My hands are covered in paint as usual.. and I have something to share. I am doing pretty good with this daily picture posting after all! :P Today I made my own little journal from a bunch of found papers. I used graph paper, vellum, scrapbook paper, cardstock, sketchbook paper, magazine sheets, etc! I made two signatures of about 12 papers each and sewed them together with waxed linen thread. I love stitching books together, it's really relaxing and fun. Stitching the signatures individually was pretty simple since I had done it before, but I gotta a little confused when having to stitch both together to make the journal. Probably because I didn't have a real good book template - I wasn't really worried about making it look too pretty. I followed Samantha Kira's bookbinding video here ... I think I actually did it right in the end, it's just a little messy looking, but that's alright, I like messy! Her videos are very helpful.. I always watch them whenever I make my own journals, so if you want to learn how to put a journal together, definitely visit her channel.


While working in this journal, I realized that my favorite journals are the ones that are messy, authentic, and just raw. I like that word to describe a journal. We're not talking about raw meat here (ew). If you go look in a thesaurus, some synonyms raw are natural, organic, rough, unrefined, and naked. Yes... let your journal be naked! Let all the scribbles and notes in messy handwriting hang out. It looks good. It's raw, and raw is naturally YOU. I was recently looking at one that I kept during my junior year of college and there's lots of scribbles, writing over pages of watercolored paint, random designs and doodles, notes from friends and elementary students I taught, old conversations, etc. It's filled with memories of my friends and I felt so nostalgic looking at it. It's real and true and if you don't like your own handwriting... I say learn to love it because there is nothing so great than to look back at entries of daily life and memories that you know so well. You think what you write down is not important.. but it is. Things that you think are not worthy of writing down now you will love looking at a few years from now and far into the future.

Tonight I was struggling between adding magazine images to my journal or pictures of my friends (haha a journal crisis I tell you!) and I do enjoy using cool looking images from magazines of course, but I started to use more real life images instead because it's more meaningful to MY life. It's me. Be you in your journal...I'm learning to realize just how worthy that is.

Happy Wednesday. Half way through your work week! What did you do that was creative today? I sat on my deck outside and sketched for about an hour, listening to my ipod. That has now become one of my most favorite things to do. I have started to really become interested in drawing and learning to sketch with pencil. I think I might ask for a book about drawing for my birthday (August 15th!). I also made a spontaneous collage after I got back from my Zumba (latin dance) class tonight. Tomorrow I am doing Zumba ON THE BEACH...thats right. It's gonna rock!

So I think daily picture posts was kind of a far out idea -- agree? I'm just not that blog savvy yet, haha. It will probably be more like weekly. Or more.. so pretty much whenever I feel like it! I don't want to be too structured, this is supposed to be fun. Speaking of pictures.. here is the collage I made tonight:

I also made another new youtube video of my art journal from this past winter. Thats now three videos in 2 weeks. I know, I can't believe it either.

I did make my yummy treat, ice cream cupcakes, but they aren't really picture worthy..I was kind of expecting them to be better, ohh well!

Until next time... make art I say!!!

I'm back, again!

Hello all! Yes, it has been awhile. A very long while. But I'm back and ready to be more consistent with this blog, or at least try! I decided that I'm going to try to post a lot of pictures on here of daily creative endeavors. Wow, that sounds so professional.. haha but I want to try to do art daily. I do it often, but not every single day. So whatever creative thing I work on..whether it be a painting, sketch, journal page, whatever.. I will post a few pictures of it. And a few other life pictures here and there too. Pretty simple concept. How about I call it "Picture Pizazz" to make it more exciting! So without further adieu.. here's the pizazz of what my muse helped me with today --

I decided to be FEARLESS and paint BIG thanks to Connie from http://www.dirtyfootprints-studio.com/ .. she rocks big time. The face is a little big for my liking, haha. Sorry if it scared you there a bit. It was VERY fun to make though!!!

Painted some pretty backgrounds for fun. These could be used for collage, journal pages, and probably many other things. Weeehoooo! I enjoyed doing this because it is relaxing and you don't feel pressure to make it look a certain way. This is a good creative activity to do if you don't want to think too much and just let loose. Well, every creative activity should allow those things.. but you know what I mean. Loose leaf paper = no pressure!

Jessie watched carefully as a I hung up my new beautiful poster... isn't it nice? It's Santa Barbara in California. When I saw it online I thought it was a photograph but it's actually a painting! It's that good. It brightens up the boring slanted wall I had over my desk!

Today was a really fun day, painting BIG was liberating..try it!

I also just made a new art journal video about found poetry-

I made a delicious summer treat too but it won't technically be ready until tomorrow, it's getting yummified in the freezer. Look for it here tomorrow!!

Please leave a comment if you are reading, I'd like to know who's stopping by! Thanks so much!

Marisa