Art Journal 2014 Edition

So right after Christmas I bought a new art journal. I was almost out of pages in my other one and I've changed so much in my creative endeavors I wanted a "new edition". It's leather bound and has torn edges to its pages. I've had a smaller version of this for a couple of years so I new I liked it. I bought a middle sized one too. Which I think I will use with different quotations, lyrics etc that catch my fancy.

Above is the first page in the art journal. Each month I want to add a calendar for the month that I can "journal" on through out the month and they will also serve as a divider for the pages. That way I will always know the month I created the certain pages in. No need to date the pages unless I want to be that specific. I need to fill in a few more notes on the January one....and below is the February one.

Please join me on the art journal 2014 project. I'd love to see some of your pages too!

Day 2 Halloween Art Journal: Nevermore

Last year I had to stretch my creativity on "non activity days" of October. There's a lot of special events and activities that we do during October and those days are usually easy to create and journal...I have to stretch my imagination on the other days. For day two I focused on using a sort of "icon" The Raven...nevermore! I found a print online where someone had created a raven with awesome words inside it...from the story and descriptions etc...I used that for the center piece of the page and then added a few touches. The bird in the cage is one of the cheap, cheap, cheap sticker packs I picked up after Halloween last year. You can't tell but it's three dimensional.

I've actually skipped around a bit because of our Haunted Alton trip (page 5 is done) but pages 3-4 aren't finished yet and it's just easier to go in order....so I'll be sharing those a bit later.

Halloween Art Journal: October 1st

Since I'm only posting on Tuesdays here at the Creative Spirit this month. I will try to get photos up in my weekly post of the Halloween Art Journal. It's easy today...as it's the first one!! Several years back a group of family and friends decided to take up ghost hunting as a hobby. We have been on several different ones at different locations. However time seems to be a difficult thing to find lately so we haven't been on one for a while. This page reminds me of past hunts and sets up an October goal of going on one this month!

Divider Page: Halloween Art Journal 2013

Since the little binders/albums I bought to use this year included three chipboard dividers I decided to start out the Halloween Art Journal with a cover/title page.

This is the page I created. I used black craft paint to paint the divider. I used some subway art I printed online to highlight the page. Then I used some random materials that I had in my stash (from all those after Halloween clearance goodies last year, what a bargain!!) The green October are from a set of glittery chipboard alphabet pieces and look even cuter in real life!  That spider is two piece...a web sticker and then a three dimensional spider sticker on top of it!

I hope you are getting geared up to CREATE during October, I'd love to see your creations!

Halloween and Christmas Art Journals 2013

Soooo......I said I wasn't going to do a 31 page Halloween art journal....but now I am!!  Here's the cover of the 6 x 8 Your Life in a SNAP Journal I bought for Halloween. Originally they were 14.99 but Michael's had them on clearance for 5.99.  Love it!!

 

This is the first year I've tried the binder style so we will see how it goes. I doubt it will be as messy-artsy as last years was but I think it can still turn out super cute and document my favorite month of the year!

 

 

Here's what I did with the one for Christmas. I was going to leave the covers for last but you know me...I can never wait patiently!!  I'm hoping to keep the artsy quality by doing all types of pages...some page protector ones with photos....painted pages, and other manner of embellishments. And this year I swear I'll journal more....about what I am doing each of the days!

 

Your Life in a Snap

So I've been trying to decide what type of art journal to use this year for Christmas. The last two years I have used (first index card dividers then board book pages) an artsy loose pages bound with rings approach. This year I wanted to try something different. I still want it to be artsy....not scrap book-y (if that make sense) but I also wanted to "pull it together" a bit.

I dropped by Michaels today just to see what they had. First off I was looking for chipboard books (found some cute ones too and even bought a couple) but then I happened upon these Your Life in a Snap binders. I think they are 6 x 8. Not too bog and not too small.  They have two rings inside and also come with some pages (card stock thickness) and some page protectors with different sized slots. Also three heavy chip board dividers are included. They immediately drew my attention. I thought the shelf sign said 14.99 but at the check out they rang up as 5.99. If I knew they were so cheap I may have been tempted to buy more!  As it is....I bought an orange one for Halloween and the red one for Christmas. Now I can't wait to start some base pages!!  So excited!!

Base pages with lined paper, graph paper and sort of like a page out of a ledger. You can also see the heavy dividers...they will be cute for decorating!

This photo shows the little page protectors that can house cards, photos and other items.

I figured these were a take off of Project Life.  Like a more generic copy cat product....but not sure. It sort of reminds me of a cross between a Smash Book and Project Life.  There was a huge section of Project Life stuff but I tried to stay away from it. I want to do "smaller" projects right now because even though I love the Project Live idea...I know myself....I suck at long term projects.

Embossed on the back cover toward the bottom...it says....Simple Stories....I like that so  much that when I decorate the binder I am going to make sure I leave that showing!

Halloween Art Journal

Last year I created a Halloween art journal. I started with a set of prompts and vowed to journal 31 pages.

I journaled pages like the one above that documented some of the many fun things I did during the month of October.

I also created some pages that just had to do with fun "Halloween type" topics. 

This year I'm itching to try some more October journaling. I'm not going to stick to the idea of a page a day for 31 days. I might turn out to be that many or it might not. I do want to use it as a combination "art" journal and writing journal that documents my month.

I'm not particularly artistic but I do enjoy the process.