A few Art Journal pages from 2008 and before

Okay well, this had several more photos, but then I was looking back at my older posts and I realized there were duplicates. Oops! So, I guess you just get one new page! Will try to post more soon!

I Don't know what to say about this one other than I clearly get joy from my art journals! I love to go back and look at them and I LOVE that I can inspire MYSELF!!

Got Sick and No Computer! : (

Okay, well of course right after I decided to recommit to my blog I got really sick and then our computer was having fits and now it's been taken away to get fixed! (I'm at my sister's at the moment.) I can't stand not having a computer. Facebook and YouTube are two of my guilty pleasures! I love watching art journal videos to get lots of fun knew ideas. While I have been sick this week I have been able to start working in my journals again, and oh how I have missed them! I feel very rusty and not fully authentic yet with my art, but I am trying to open up and start spilling onto the pages once again. Which brings me to...inviting you to join me once again in this fun and highly therapeutic activity! If you didn't join me the first time around, or if you didn't finish all the prompts I gave, go back and right them down and get started!! I hadn't done the last few of them, so I am going to go back and catch up as well. I'm hoping to do that and get them posted in the next week or so, then I will start posting new prompts. Please let me know if you have any questions about art journaling. The most important thing to know and remember is THERE ARE NO RULES!! (This is one of my favorite parts. As anyone who knows me, knows that I am not much of a rules girl. :)) Anyway, please join me, and if anyone would like to get together to make art together just let me know and we'll make a date. With all the many hobbies and passions that I have, I think they are twice as fun when you're doing them with a friend!

MOST recent pages!

This was the first page I did in my new house! I've done all of these since I moved in there.


I'm still working in the composition book and I love that format, but I had this cute little journal that I got super cheap somewhere. It's 5"x7". I decided I want to start experimenting with different sizes and shapes of journals. I will probably leave this cover the way that it is.


This is the first page. Simple, but I really love it!


I saw a video on YouTube by fridayeudaemonism where she did a month of gratitude art journaling. 5 things a day. I'm going to try to make some of these myself. (Not everyday.) I did this one May 12th.


While I was looking in magazines for the pictures for the gratitude page, I came across this. It made my day! Look at those smoldering eyes! I had a lot of fun making this page!! Enjoy!

Pages from recent past.

The left page I was trying to figure out why I was feeling SO pulled to California. I was already dying to go back and had even made plans to go and stay and look for a job. I'm not sure how well you can see the "why?" at the top. Then I just made a small pocket and put tags in that are labeled with the different things that were calling to me.

The right page was a piece of pink vellum I had added into the binding and I was just playing and trying something new.


I added ribbon and then sewed the page to another one along the top. I added a cloth tab to the bottom for lifting and then journaled underneath. There is also a title rub-on on the under side that says "The Journey Home."


This is what is under the vellum page. I would still like to add something, but I'm not sure what.




I REALLY like this page! Sorry, I didn't realize it is a bit blurry.

Recent Pages _ Suzi Blu

OK, so there is this woman I like to watch on YouTube. Her name is Suziblu. She is setting up a new website and she has moved most of her videos, but she is also on Facebook and has posted some on there as well. She had a great ning network, but was having problems with some people and so she is creating a new one. She still teaches classes from there, you should check her out at suziblu.ning.com! She is also at http://www.alovelydream.com/. I'll warn you, she's a bit kooky!




This is a page inspired by one of her videos. A bit plainer than I usually do, but I liked the concept. I guess it's possible that I will add to it. If I do, I'll add another pic. I think I won't elaborate on this one.

Prompt #9 -- Your home

OK, no big surprise here. You can do all sorts of things with this. Just do a page having anything to do with your home, or maybe the home you would like to have! I'm hoping to soon have my page done BEFORE I post the prompt so that you can have an idea of what you can do. Keep your fingers crossed!
I thought I would be all caught up by now on my pages since its one of the only things I have to do at the new place, but I've been hooked on Sodoku!

I've moved! & Prompt #8

OK, I've been busy moving and being exhausted and now as you must know, I'm even more behind than before! I did do some good art journaling last night, but I'm not sure if they are pages I would post. I will be heading over to the new place soon and will work on my prompt pages so that I can hurry and post my pics. I will also post pics of my new house!! Yay, so fun and beautiful! I'll take my camera over today.

OK, so Prompt #8 is: Married or Single.
Which ever one of these you are, do a page about it. What it means to you, pros, cons...
I'm excited to do this one!

Way behind!! & Prompt #7

Sorry! Once again, I have fallen behind on my posts AND my pages!! I'm going to catch up on pages this week and post pics. I made no art last week and that is noooo good!! I might have some from the week before, but they are not from my prompts. My goal at the beginning of the year was to make art everyday. Unfortunately I go in spurts. I would like to do better! Its good for my soul! What are your art goals? I'd like to hear!

Prompt #7--Art (Anything about it. What it does for you, your favorites, how you define art, your goals...) Have fun and lets all catch up!!

Art Journal Prompt #6

This weeks prompt is: Something I learned today. (or this week.)

I will post my page from prompt #5 ASAP. It has a great story to go along with it!

Art Journal Prompt #5

OK, this week's prompt is "Found Object(s)"
Use any item(s) you might find laying around not in your own home. Glue, tape, tie, sew or modge podge them into your page. The page can be about anything you want!

My pages for prompts 1-4

Prompt #1 - "Your Initial" This art journal is just a composition book you can get for about $1, or even cheaper at back to school time. I used a combination of rub-ons, stickers and ink.

Prompt #2 - "What are you really hungry for?" These are little mini file folders and I have the tabs labeled with the things I really want. I hadn't added the front one, "Peace of Mind," and then I realized that, that is what I REALLY want. It is often the reason I eat...to quiet the anxiety. But of course it isn't lasting and causes me more anxiety in the end. (In side the file folders I'm going to add little slips of paper where I will write more about each one.)
Prompt #3 - "Your Mood" I had started this one a while back with a prompt from another site that was, "Ephemera from your week." I covered the pages with a sheet from the LUSH catalog that I had received that week. You can see it lightly coming through the paint. I also had an empty package from my Lexapro. I instantly had the idea to fill it with tiny beads and I love how it turned out! I hadn't done any writing on it and wasn't sure what else I wanted to do with it, so when I went to do my "mood" page I thought this would be perfect!
It has a hidden little flap!
Prompt #4 - Spring

Recent Art Journal Pages

I have been doing several pages to help with therapy lately. This one is simple, but effective and necessary! The borders are rub-ons, the stop sign is scrapbook paper and the black letters are chipboard with glitter. I accidentally got white paint across them and some pink paint at the top, but it just adds to it.
This is the last page I worked and I absolutely LOVE it!! I love the colors and I love the message (that I desperately need to believe) and I love the picture that was on the front of a card my mom got from an insurance company!
This page was using one of the prompts I had gotten from Emily's site- "Note to self." (it was from prompts she did 2 years ago. She actually started new ones this year, so hp over there for more ideas!)
This is one I did at the end of December. There is writing on there too, that you can't really see inthe pic. I'm just trying to show you different styles of pages.

Art Journal Pages

Hello! Sorry I haven't been posting, but here are a few more of my recent journal pages. I hope you enjoy them!


I worked on this one the week of Thanksgiving. I really enjoyed doing it and it helped me remember all that I have that makes my life rich! If you are thinking of art journaling, this is a GREAT page to do.


I did these pages when I was REALLY not doing well. I thought it was interesting that even though I used all the black I also had the flowers that may have represented the desire to feel better.

This is kind of a random crazy page, but I like it!

This is an old one, but I loved the colors!

More journal pages

I'm just about finished with my 2nd art journal, just a page or two left. I like to wait until I'm almost done to decorate the cover, so I did this last week. I was REALLY happy with how it turned out!

There is a wonderful blog by a very talented woman. She is very free and creative and I love that! embers.typepad.com In January of last year she started a project for her viewers online. It is a deck of cards called "The Deck of You." You check it out at http://embers.typepad.com/e/2007/01/page/2/ She gave a new prompt each week for a card. I've decided to use these prompts for journal pages. This is challange #3 I am...


I did this a few weeks ago. First, I put down a ripped paper towel with some Modge Podge, then just painted the sun and stapled some ribbons in the corner. The inspiriation was a small drawing of a sun that I saw in a magazine add. I really like the texture!


I had an artist friend that told me one of her teachers had taught that you should draw a self-portrait everyday. I have gotten out of the practice, but decided to do this a few weeks ago. I was really pleased with this, especially because its much skinnier than I am!


I had done these pages about a year ago, but just recently added the quote by marriane Williamson. I'd like to share it,
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'who am I to be brilliant...talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a Child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you...We are born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us...As we let our own light shine, we unconciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
I absolutely LOVE this quote! May we all learn to live it!

Here I am!

Hello everyone, sorry for the long break. Those of you of you who know me, know that I am bi-polar and also have really bad anxiety, both of which present quite the challange in my life. Sometimes I am much more functional than others, so if you ever don't hear from me for a while, I'm probably just having a hard time. I wanted to be able to add something so I decided to post more of my art journal pages. I highly recommend art journaling to everyone. It is so freeing and especially helpful when having a difficult time. These are not pages that I've done this past week, but more recently than the others I previously posted.

On this page I just layered masking tape and then I took water soluable oil pastels by Portfolio and outlined the pieces of tape and then just smeared it with my finger. I highly recommend this product. Its inexpensive and you can buy them at Staples, Office Max, etc. A pack of 24 colors is about $9. They are nice vibrant colors and smear easily with or without water and you can layer them and blend colors nicely.

This is a page about the Hindu Goddess Sarasvati. She is the goddess of all the arts: music, painting, sculpture, dance and writing. I have a piece of crinkled tissue paper, paint and some melted crayon. I adhered her picture with melted beeswax.

The left page is covered with black artist quality acrylics, which gives it a nice glossy finish. I wrote on top with glitter gel pens. (They're called "The Ultimate Gel Pen" and I love them! They right really smoothly.) The right page is done in dry pastels.

This is the oldest of the pages I'm showing today, but I wanted to show it because it was the first time I used beeswax. You just melt it and then you can paint it right on. It gives a really neat effect. I also used a little melted crayon. I was even able to use the wax to adhere the small Scrabble tiles. Bees wax stays supple so it doesn't dry and crack and fall off.

SO, grab a notebook or sketch pad of some sort and start playing! It is so fun and refreshing. Don't judge, just pretend you're a kid! You can even just use one of those cheap black and white composition books.

A last little bit of Halloween!

I just wanted to share a couple more Halloween things and then I'll be done!
These are the art journal pages I did on my fun-filled Halloween weekend when my friend from Arizona came up to surprise me! (It was actually a couple weeks before Halloween.)


I realized in the pictures of me dressed up as a witch, you could never get a look at my hat. I LOVE this hat! I think it may be my favorite witch hat ever!

This is my "Hocus Pocus" quilt. Its quite a masterpiece, TONS of work!!

I quilted each block to go with the specific applique in it. This one has potion bubbling out of the bottle.

You can see the spiderweb I quilted around the spider.

OK, I promise I'm done with Halloween now!

Art Jornaling

For those of you who are not familiar with art journaling, it is exactly as it sounds, a combination of art and journaling. I first decided to give it a shot about seven years ago when I was inspired by the published journal of artist Sabrina Ward Harrison. Her book was called "Spilling Open- The art of becoming yourself." I have always been a big journaler and then this adds one of my other greatest passions, art. Now let me make something clear, when I say that it is one of my greatest passions this does not necessarily mean I am good at it. But the wonderful thing about art journals is there is no right or wrong. You CAN"T mess it up. There are NO rules! You can use any and every sort of art supply or found objects in your journal and just let yourself and your emotions just spill out onto the pages.

Its an incredibly theraputic process. Its not something that has to be pretty. If you're angry you can scribble in black or red, the point is to give your emotions some place to go so that you can get past them. This is also great way to figure out things. These pages started a series of pages answering the question, "Who do I want to be?" One of the things I love is trying all sorts of different techniques. I will try to share some of these with you in the future. There are also some great tutorials on Youtube. (I've decided I LOVE Youtube! You can learn how to do anything on there!) You might not be able to tell, but on the above right hand page I printed one of my favorite quotes on acetate and then just used stickers to tape it in. This is what the quote says:

"I want to be a woman who lives with TRUTH and without fear. I want to reach the highest vibration of humanity possible. I want my LIGHT to shine so brightly that others will be attracted to it and be compelled to SHINE as brightly. I want to be truth in the universe, to SEEK it, to STAND for it, to BE it. "

~Oprah Winfrey

You'll notice that I like to put quotes in my art journals. I find it a perfect way to keep favorites that I hear or read. Its a nice way to keep them accessible.

This last one I did recently, but the others were from my first art journal. I can see my style changing as I learn new things. I will share more pages soon. These were kind of similiar because I happened to choose several with quotes, but I journal all sorts of pages. Sometimes there is alot of journaling and sometimes it is more art. Sometimes I may not have much to say, but I feel like creating, so I'll just work on backrounds and then another time, go back and add to them. Or other times, I may not be feeling very creative but I have alot to say or just need to get stuff out of my head so then I'll just fill a page or two with writing. Like I said, NO RULES!!