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 colle
ge 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.
2 comments:
awesome post! love your new journal.. and i totally agree about "rawness" ~ i art journal in handmade books because they are imperfect and ready to be messed up further with all manner of art supplies. i find that it's much easier for me to create if i don't expect perfection, but rather embrace authenticity! :)
Loved your mixed paper journal and glad you signed up to the Sketchbook Project! I just got mine and have been doing a bit of testing because the paper is so thin and coated.
If you are interested, my results are here: http://makenart.blogspot.com/2010/07/sketchbook-project-2011-moleskine-test.html
Oh, and thanks for the link to the Postcrossed site, I've been looking for something like that! Nobody sends real mail anymore.
Post a Comment