So I started an art journal...

Okay, here goes nothin'.  Or something.  I'm finally sharing my first art journal page that I made in my Dylusions art journal.  You can see what the art journal looks like below. It's a nice big 9 x 12 size with very sturdy covers.  

Inside there is a manila pocket for storing whatever you like and a front cover page.

The inside pages are wonderful quality journal pages that are specifically designed to withstand art medium such as paint, gesso, mists and modeling paste.  This really is a good journal.  If you're interested I am putting them on sale for a short time in my shop.  

So.  I decided to start an art journal. I pinned so many art journal pages, watched a lot of videos, did a lot of research....and I still wasn't quite sure what an art journal meant to me.  I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to take, what I wanted to include.  So I just opened the journal...and it sat for quite a while.  Those nice big 9 x 12 pages stared at me and I stared back.  Then I just started laying down scraps, little pieces and parts that I liked.  Before I knew it I had a whole collage going on.  I really liked the way it looked.  Truth be known, I probably like the before better than the final product but I promised myself I wouldn't judge or critique my art journal.  

 But sometimes when starting something new, you have to take a certain path before you know which road you really want to take, right?  Such was the case with my first art journal pages.  I jumped in one day and just started spritzing and spraying and painting and adding gesso and more.  I kind of feel like I didn't know when or where to stop because I didn't know how I wanted my pages to turn out.  I couldn't help but critique the pages as a finished product.  That's what I'm used to doing...finishing a card, finishing a Project Life layout, etc.  It's hard to just create and dabble and not expect a big "tada" at the end.  But I know that I want my art journal to be just a mixture...not a finished product. So here are my first pages.  Love it, hate it....I'm not sure yet.  But the process felt great, I do know that!

 So I shut the journal and left it for a while.  When I went back to the journal I knew I needed to share it. I know that some of you might be feeling the same way or asking the same questions about why to start or what to do in an art journal.  I'm still asking those questions but I did come to some conclusions.

I will share in a future post about where I think my art journaling might be headed but here are a few thoughts.  I loved looking at these separate photos of the pieces and parts of my pages.  I could break down the techniques and really identify what I loved instead of looking at the entire 2 pages as a finished piece.  I loved seeing little sections and thinking, "hey I would like to try that on a card", etc. Like the Gesso with the aqua spray mist.

 I loved stitching and adding textural items to my pages like this vintage place mat I had in my stash.  I liked seeing how the spray reacted on this old book page.

 I love the white space with just a few splatters.  I loved adding fabric although it totally got muddied up.

 I liked adding in a tag I had made earlier.  I liked working with the color wheel and adding splashes of color to complement each other.

 Overall, it's okay.  Sometimes you figure out what you definitely don't like before you figure out what you definitely do like.

I've got more thoughts that I need to get down in writing.  I'm excited to turn the page and try again.  I think I have a plan and I'm excited to share it with you once I experiment a little more.  Thanks for joining me today.  I can tell you, I was so hesitant to share this but then I remembered...I'm not looking for a good or bad critique.....it was all about the process.