A Journal of My Own

    This past week I have been taking a bit of a break from creating items for my shop back in Michigan .  For one thing, my time here in AZ is growing shorter; two, I wanted some playtime; and three, I ran across a couple of new blogs that really stress the importance of personal art journaling.   iHanna's blog led me to create a new kind of journal--an altered book.  I found found several good choices at a thrift store and selected an old anatomy book for my first real attempt at creating a personal journal. 

     Mr. Muscles is actually one of the frontpieces of the anatomy book; I added my own chipboard words which will become the title of my journal.  I haven't done anything to the book's cover yet, but I'm processing ideas.  I removed about half of the pages of the book since it would become too cumbersome with all of the additions I will make in my journaling.  I will also be dividing the journal into sections, alloting 10-12 pages per section. 

     Another frontpiece of the old book which I had to keep.  One of my daughters is a high-school English teacher who loves Shakespeare; I added my own comment  (seemed appropriate).



     Here are a couple of the pages torn from the old book:  I cut them into strips, wove the pieces back into one page, and refastened it into my journal. 

    After gessoing over the back of the woven insert, I added my message, and then used water-color crayons to put some color back into the design.  (I am using red and blue for the first few pages of my journal  to give homage to the flesh and blood represented in the pages of any anatomy book.)



     This is the last page of the intro part of my journal (a few pages weren't shown here), and it leads to the next section:  BIRDS.

     Only semi-sucessful page--the message of stamped letters on painted tissue paper (also from Hanna's blog) worked beautifully, but the background is way too dark.  I took some of my hand carved stamps, placed a piece of printer paper over them, and used the edges of Crayola crayons to rub patterns of the stamps onto the paper.  That part was OK, but when I added paint over the top, I lost a lot of the color.  Oh well, the chickadee was my focal point, anyway.

     A quickly-collaged page calls to mind a super fun birding trip this winter with friends from Michigan.

     A "lovely" piece of art,  this shows one of my first blind drawing attempts (prompted by a blog session with Jane Davies) in which I closed my eyes, thought "bird" and started drawing.  Yikes!!  I added the color with my eyes open, thank heavens.  It was fun, and I'm adding it to my bird section--it's my own personal art journal, after all.

      And another. . .  I thought this looked a bit Picassoesque (sp.)  No comments, please.

     Really do like this one!  I had drawn these warblers during the winter for some small notepads and still had the masters, so I printed them on tissue paper.  After cutting around each bird, I adhered them to a piece of cardstock with gel medium and colored the spaces with water-color crayon.  I activated the crayon, cut out a bunch of leaf shapes from some painted tissue paper, and gelled (?) them down, too. 

     I actually have a couple of more journal entries ready to post, but I'll save them for later (I know, this entry is way too long already!!).  Some ideas about other sections wanted to get put onto paper. That's probably how I'll function with this journal--ADD is my friend!!!.