Art Journaling Basics – Art Journal from a Recycled Book

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The second stop on our Artful Adventure into Art Journaling is learning how to recycle a book into an art journal.

Not only is it economical, it’s a very “green” thing to do! Read, watch, or do both! It’s up to you!  You can find the first episode here.

We have a thrift store nearby that always has an excellent selection of books, and I periodically stop in to see what there is to choose from. For this episode I stopped by and found a fun book by Erma Bombeck. I always loved her column and her take on looking at life with humor. The book was only 99 cents, and was a pink tag item. Pink tag items were half off today! So I picked up a hard back book for 50 cents. However, as I began to flip through the book, I decided I would rather read it before I turned it into an art journal. Yes, this is problem you may have when selecting books that you don’t own.  You may decide you want to read it first, and then you have to select something else.  I found another one that was a similar size and that I could live with taking it home to turn into a journal today! Actually, I think I read that book before! No wonder I didn’t mind turning it into a journal!

After you select your book, you need gesso.  That’s it!  If you want to use a brush or a sponge applicator, you may. However, I will warn you now, you will have to clean them!  So, I just prefer to use my hands to spread the gesso.  I use a liquid gesso, and it makes it so easy to smooth onto the pages.

Before you start applying gesso, you’ll want to thin your book down.  As you work through your art journal, you’ll be adding layers of paint, paper, and who knows what else!  So you’ll want to thin out some pages so there is actually room for your art journal pages to live within the covers, and still have a chance of closing it.

As you look through your book, there may be pages you want to keep free of gesso, and leave in the book.  That way, you can have some text backgrounds, or some titles or phrases peeking through that really “speak” to you.  You don’t have to, it’s just an idea. Again, I remind you, there is not a right or wrong way to art journal!

Now, you are ready to start weeding out pages and thinning down your book.Leave a few pages, and then take out 3 or 4. You can carefully tear them out, or use an craft knife to cut close to inside edge of the page.  Keep the ones you remove to use for text pages in your journal or for other projects.  Just repeat the process until you have made your way through the book.

Next, pour a little gesso on an open spread of 2 pages, and just smooth it out with your hand, brush, or applicator. Leave it open until it is dry. You may need to hold it open by clipping a bit of the edge with a clothes pin, tiny clamp, or binder clip. If you are in a hurry, you may like to use a heat tool to dry it.

You can take the bit that is left on your hand and smear it onto the next page, and it will act as adhesive and you can adhere two or three pages together to give more strength to the page.

That’s it! Acrylic gesso cleans up with water, so just clean up your hands or brushes with water!

The next stop on this art journaling journey will cover different adhesives we can use in our art journal for decoupage, collage techniques, or just sealing things down.  So stay on board, I’m sure you’ll want to know about them!

Oh, we’d love to have you show or tell us about your journal you create with this method! Feel free to connect in the comments, or over at the Artful Adventures Facebook group!

Until our next stop,

KS

July’s Art Journals, Gesso, and Gelatos!

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Grab your passport because July’s Artful Adventures are going to be fun! We are going to heat it up around here and start off July with a bang!

First off, we are going to get the scoop on Art Journaling. If you have ever wondered what it is, where to start, and what to use, then this is the perfect adventure for you!

Next, since gesso is a basic product and often used in art journaling, we’ll be covering what you need to know about gesso.

Then it’s off to discover Gelatos! I hope you will love them as much as I do! We will be learning how to use them in a variety of ways, and you’ll be so happy to know that they are perfect for art journaling, scrapbooking, and card-making! I seriously can’t wait to show you!

Cheers to YOUR creativity!

KS

 

 

 

Photo Credit: bayasaa via Flickr Creative Commons License

Random Art Journal and Scrapbook Prompts

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What do you do when you are totally stuck and really don’t know where to start on an art journaling page or a scrapbook page? Even if you are using a list of simple prompts, you may still need an extra nudge of inspiration! Here is an idea you may not have thought of – a way to look online for very random inspiration!

Kristie-Sloan-Random-Prompts_Album-Cover

Layout inspired by music album cover art.

There are many places online to find images.  However, we are not looking for something to copy, we are looking for inspiration. A couple of key places to look are Ebay and Amazon! The reason those are great places to look is because there are going to be so many things associated with a word you type into your search. If you are only using one of the regular search engines like Google or Bing, your search will really be much more narrow. The images that come up will be so closely related to your search word, that they will all be very similar unless you scroll down to page 1,000 of the search!

When you use Ebay or Amazon, you should have such random things come up that you might get an inspirational idea such as:

  • a color palette
  • a layout
  • a reminder of a technique you haven’t used in a while or maybe have never tried

Let’s talk a little more specifically. There are often books and packaging that come up in this type of search. Why not use them as inspiration? You may take the layout of the lettering, the graphic design, or the color scheme. That would be three ways to use the look of just one book or package. That’s just the beginning! There are so many ways this could take you

Some ways that you might generate random images could be using:

  • your name
  • the street you currently live on
  • the street you grew up on
  • a pet’s name

What you come up with may be very out of the ordinary for your usual work! Here is another post about using prompts.

Have you tried this method of random idea inspiration?  What did you come up with?

Simple Ideas and Prompts for Art Journaling and Scrapbooks

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Do you ever feel like you just need a little nudge getting starting on a scrapbook page, or an art journal page? Let’s talk about that for just a minute! The other day, I announced that you could get a page of Inspiration Starters for free.  It has 45 prompts that you can use for either scrapbooking or art journaling. Today, let’s talk a little bit about prompts and inspiration.

Kristie Sloan Ink and Paint Blots

Simple prompts make YOU use YOUR CREATIVITY, like an ink blot test!

Some people like to have an idea spelled out for them, in kind of a “take this and do that with it” way. Since I like to urge you to stretch your creative wings, my inspiration prompts are a little more random that that. They are more like those ink blot tests!

If I say “BLUE,” what would you think of?  There are many ways you could go with a prompt or idea that is just as simple as one word. Here are some things you might come up with for blue:

  • the sky
  • feeling “blue”
  • baby boy blue
  • your car may be blue
  • a favorite piece of clothing
  • color of your house
  • a room in your home
  • a new art product you just bought
  • the blue eyes of someone special
  • the nursery rhyme “Little Boy Blue”
  • your phone may have a blue cover and spend a lot of time on it
  • your favorite shade of blue
  • … etc., etc., etc.

See what I mean? That’s what is so fun about getting less information with a prompt! When YOU come up with what you are going to do with the prompt, it is truly YOUR idea!  So go ahead and get the sheet of “nudging” right now! When you let me know you want the sheet of prompts, you’ll even get a new sheet every month!  By the way, blue is not on this list!