Art Journal pages

Summer's are always busy around here. As we start July, weekends will be filled with birthday parties, graduation parties, swim lessons, and everything else that goes on during the weekend. It's hard to believe that in just 3 weeks we'll be heading north for our annual family camping trip. And before I know it, it'll be time for school supplies and 1st grade for the kiddo. Time really does fly.

I thought I would share a couple of art journal pages that I've completed recently.


This is the title page for the Art Heart and Healing course that I started last year. The cover of this journal had such a rough texture, I just used the front page for the cover.

My celebration page.

And this page, in my altered book journal, was inspired by a quote someone had posted on Twitter.

Art, Heart and Healing Journal Page 2- part 2 (actually it's page 3)...

This is part 2 of week 2. I had finished my whimsy page a while ago and have just gotten around to taking a decent picture of it.

Here's part 1 if you have forgotten. I do apologize for the quality of the picture. It had been snowing non stop for a couple days when I took the picture, so the lighting isn't that great.

The idea behind part 2 of week 2 was to heal some sort of childhood trauma. Without getting too much into the details, the relationship I had with my dad and my sister wasn't at all the greatest. To this day, either relationship still isn't great. So my idea for my whimsy page was to begin to heal the relationship that I had with my sister (the little girl in the pink dress), and heal the relationship we both had with our dad.

The words stamped on both pages say; encouragement, praise, understanding, support, connection and love.

I hope to get back to both of my art journals once the holiday chaos is over with. Stay tuned!

Art, Heart and Healing Journal Page 2- part 1

I'm making progress. I'm still about a week behind in the Art, Heart and Healing classes, but I'm enjoying the process so much. This has been such an eye opener really. Not only in how I see myself, but how others close to me affect that same view, and how I deal with it. Honestly, I don't do well. I worked really hard on my layout and was really excited to show off one element of the layout before I was totally finished. Mom liked it a lot (she's always been my biggest fan really) and dad, well he didn't say a thing. He just did his classic "Humph".

I shook it off like I usually do. When Chris got home from work, I showed him. He liked it as well, but when he started in with the suggestions he usually does (Which I am thankful for, he really does help me see my art from a non artist point of view), I just got really defensive and broke down into tears. I was really upset by my dad's lack of praise. 

My sister brought up a good point. He's never really been supportive of my art. I don't know if it's just because I never finished college and doing something with it, or what. While growing up, the only time he seemed to show any kind of praise was when it directly involved him. For a recent example, the kitchen cabinets. Because he bought used cabinets and saved money on refinishing them because I did it, he was proud of how they looked. My sister and I put up the kick boards under the cabinets with 45 degree cuts and everything. I admit it looks good, dad's proud because he didn't have to pay someone to put them in. 

But when it comes to supporting the things my sister and I do that doesn't involve him in some degree, there is no praise, or even that look of pride. I wonder if it's because he and I aren't close (We just barely get along as it is, mainly because I stay out of his way most the time and totally avoid him when he's been drinking).

Anyway, here's my page 2. I didn't have a board book to alter, so I just stuck it right in my journal with page 1 that I did last week. I feel the journal is more of a self healing, self discovering journey and the pages fit well together.

I definitely need to practice more with gel medium image transfers. I haven't decided if it was not enough water, too much water, or my pressing down too hard that led to the image peeling a way a little bit, but I still like it.

See my cute little faery?! She was what I was excited to share with my mom.

I love how she turned out! I think I must draw more faeries just like her. She was so fun to draw.

Well, on to page 2 of week 2.

Healing Art Journal Page

This weekend was a blur of activity. It started with my having to pick the kiddo up from school on Friday because of pink eye followed by a trip to the pediatrician. Saturday we finally put the kick boards up under the kitchen cabinets. And Sunday it was another trip back to the doctor because the kiddo has an ear infection. 

Thank goodness for art therapy! Without it I don't think I would have survived the weekend much.

I stumbled upon Tam at Willowing.org a couple weeks back while reading another blog (I apologize that I can't remember which one) and loved the idea. So I signed up and finished up a few projects that needed to be finished before I started. This is my week 1 layout.

I've drawn when I was upset, I've drawn when I was happy. But drawing to heal is something I've never done. I wasn't expecting the feelings and emotions that came when I started, but I welcomed them all the same. It felt like a huge weight was being lifted and that I was finally able to breath again.

To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure if I was going to like how it turned out. Half way through, I was starting to get upset because the paper wasn't taking the water colors well and it started to get really thin because of the water. But as I continued to work at it, and use more colored pencils for the shading instead of relying on the watercolors and acrylics, it pulled itself together. And I got to use some of my distress inks for the background which was really fun. 

I learned to let go of my constant quest for perfect portraits and drawing people who look real. That was never really my style. And even when I try to draw a realistic portrait, they are still stylized. So I've come to embrace that. It's what makes me unique.