Hybrid Mixed Media Journal

It's been a while, but I finally got to do some more She Art work!!  I love doing this type of art. The mixed media is so very pleasing to all my sensory needs!  It allows my creative process to flow, while I think through some deep thoughts and capture some!  It's an art journaling process.

For this one, I got to also play a bit digitally. Arty Pants Digital Stamps has released some really awesome digital stamp goodies that help make Femme images a real breeze!  Check them all out here.

I laid out my design in Photoshop, then printed the background. That got Mod Podged to a composition book.  I then printed the girl, the word strips and the embellishments separately. I fussy cut the girl and pieces and Mod Podged each layered on the journal. I used paints, bubble wrap, punchanella, inks, pens etc to shade, color and highlight.

Some areas got built up with gesso and modeling paste. Glitter got sprinkled on various layers including the lace, and the girls hair. Unfortunately we did not get any sun today to help with the photographs, so you'll just have to trust me that the bling is really nice!

Some gems were added to the flowers on her dress and in her hair. I doodled around the word strips that are layered on the journal.  Can you see how much fun this is?

I didn't need to add any rub-ons since the Extras by Arty Pants include some awesome stamps to make this super easy!

This beauty has already been delivered to a friend.  I hope she enjoys exploring her dreams and releasing her true beauty!

Designer Showcase: Cool Ways to Journal

It's Pam sharing this week's designer showcase which is one of my favorite topics, journaling! When I first started scrapbooking, I rarely if ever journaled. I wish I would have journaling for more of pages at the time. Recording the thoughts on a page closer to the date it was taken would be nice to look at. Here the first bright idea for you. If you can't think how to put journaling on your page, jot it down quickly on the back of your layout. It is covered anyway, so no one will see your scribble except you, or the person who takes out your page to take a peek! :)
Ok, time to get on to more cool ways to journal. Have you ever been stuck trying to find a creative way to journal on your page? If so take a look a these neat ideas and let them inspire you on your next page.


BRIGHT IDEA #1: Let your subject create the journaling!
Tanya created this first page. She did something so cool that I have not thought of before. Tanya picked a friend to scrapbook and emailed her ten questions to answer. That friend emailed her back and Tanya used those answers to journal on to her page. I have done this before for my family, but never my friends! I love this idea!! Let's see her page!

BRIGHT IDEAS #2: Journal around a cool shape in a small font.
Lesley created our next page and did something cool! She journaled around the outlining shape! This rocks because it really flows well with her page. Also her journaling is small but works well with the design. Let's hear what she had to say additionally about her page,"I like to work with white card stock backgrounds lately, and add colour with small amounts of paper and embellishments.  the paper I have used today is the 'Blue China' brand.  the fancy circle behind the top right photo was cut using the Martha Stewart new circle punches, Half way down the page on each side I have used Washi Tape which I am really loving, it resembles a distressed stamp so much, I have used two stamps on the page, bottom right is a Close To the Heart stamp and the other one which I've used twice, is a Kaisercraft stamp."

BRIGHT IDEA #3: Create invisible border to journal on.
Sharon completed our next example. She also journaled around a shape but part of the border invisible! I love that she used right angles and it reminds me of the theme of her page: a sports page. Also notice those cool ball shapes coming from the photo!

BRIGHT IDEA #4: Record onto journaling strips and blend into border.
Her is another page by Sharon.  This is cool because she lined up her journaled with the banner strips. It love the effect of this because not only are you drawn to her photos but also the journaling. The overall design of the page realy pops!!

BRIGHT IDEA #5: Journal inside a shape that lifts up.
Marlene created this adorable page! Her page is creative in so many ways, but if you notice, Marlene journaled inside the truck that had hinges to have the back lifted up. This ties in so well to her adorable themed page. You can see the layout and then journaling example on the bottom right side. 

BRIGHT IDEA #6: Create hidden journaling.
This next idea was created by Gael. I love this overall design and the fact that you can pull out that journaling from inside the photo.  The second photo reveals how the journaling looks! Don't you just love this. It fits perfectly for this beautiful page.

BRIGHT IDEA #7: Use list style journaling.
Cindy made this layout which featured list style journaling. I must admit, this is one of my favorite ways to journal. I love lists! Check out how neat her page turned out. Lists help keep you thoughts straight while journaling while getting in all that you have to say ;)

BRIGHT IDEA #8: Cut out each letter in journaling and use journaling as title.
Another page by Cindy shows us a super cool way to journal. Try cutting out each letter to create a really neat page. I love how her journaling is also the title!! This is cool and I have not tried this one before ... to make my journaling the title.

I hope you have enjoyed all of these journaling ideas!! Your turn: do you have a neat way to journal and want to be featured on the blog? Simply email me at scrappingpam73@yahoo.com and tell me your idea! Have a super day!



VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S BLOGS/GALLERIES
Cathy Dippolito
Dolores Schaeffer
Cindy deRosier
Marlene Murphy
Lesley Walker
Gael Spence
Sarah Routledge
Sharon Fritchman
Tanya Ham
Sheila Burns
Pam Callaghan
 

Designer Showcase: Journal Cards

Have you been seeing journal cards on projects?  I've seen them popping up in all sorts of kits, both digital and traditional. They seem to have gotten a big push with Project Life. Now they are being used in a number of ways.  Hi there! It's Cathy here to share this weeks Designer Showcase, which, as you probably guessed, is all about journal cards.

Project Life is a scrapbook methodology created by Becky Higgins that was started to help simplify the process. To help get your memories and your life recorded, but to do so in an effective and efficient manner that leaves you more time to spend on.... your life.  To do this, she incorporates the use of  photo pocket pages and 4x6 journal cards to help you get it done.  You can read more about Project Life here.

K&Company has also used similar ideas with their Smash books. They have coordinating Smash Pads that make the journaling so much easier!

You can use these products and techniques in your own style of scrapbooking.  Many scrapbookers have been making their own journal cards.  Whether you use predefined prompts, or just let the writing flow, the end result is the same: you are getting your life recorded!  Here are some projects where we've used journaling cards.

In the layout above, Marlene was scrapping a fun day that needed a bit of explanation   She had created the layout with a blocked area for the photos.  This didn't leave her much room for journaling.  So she slipped a journaling card between the main part of the layout (blue) and the outer frame (black). She attached a string to the skunks tail that when pulled reveals her journaling. Clever!  A great use for a journaling card and a great way to place your journaling if you want it to be hidden.

This is an older double page layout that I did. I cropped journal cards, envelopes and my photos all the same size (I think they are 2x3").  I added journaling to the cards and placed some ephemera from our trip in the envelopes. A bit of paint on a roller stamp made a border frame. Without a lot of elements to layer, it was a quick page to create that captured many fond memories.

This is another quick page that I created (quite some time ago). My one son and I love to ride Rock n' Roller Coaster when we go to Disney World.  The photos are the ones that you can buy at the shop and the end of the ride.  I used a journal card that had the prompts pre-printed on it.  It made it so fast to get down the basic facts. I then added a Disney sticker and a Prima rhinestone guitar and the page was done!

These are part of an album in progress. My apologies for the poor photos of it.  I'm currently working on this in my spare time.  It has photos from a trip that we took to Hawaii. There are so many wonderful photos and fantastic memories to include in the album.  Rather than doing my typical scrapbook pages of all the photos (which would take me a long time), I'm creating this album that has 4x6 prints of the photos as well as some hand made journal cards. I've been using my Silhouette Cameo to create the journal cards. Some are shapes that can be purchased in the Silhouette Online Store (they have lots of them!).  Some I create by "welding" shapes or fonts.  They are making it easy for me to document the trip as I work on the album.

I'm sure that many of you have used journal cards creatively in your projects. We'd love to see them. Send them to me at scrappycath(@)gmail(.)com (minus the parentheses) and we'll showcase them in an upcoming Reader's Pages post!

Designer Showcase: Art Journaling

Hey there and happy Wednesday to you all. It's Cathy here.  The theme for this weeks Designer Showcase is Art Journaling.

What is an Art Journal? Art journaling can take many forms. It is a way to express yourself using creativity as a base.  It could be a way to keep your daily/weekly thoughts, or perhaps a travel journal, maybe a record of a special occurrence in your life, an exercise or diet diary, a bucket-list, to-do list or list of resolutions.  What makes it an art journal is the embellishment that you add to the pages.

You can use all sorts of artistic media in the process.  Including written journaling adds to the depth of the expression.  What's important to remember is that there is no right or wrong way to do this. Just do what helps you to open up and share your thoughts and feelings.

Let's take a look at some samples that the Contributing Artists are sharing today.

This is the cover of an art journal that I created. This particular art journal serves as a source of inspiration for me.  I collect things that get my creative process moving. Sometimes it's magazine clippings, advertisements or even junk mail. Sometimes it's photographs I've taken, paintings that I've done or other mixed media work I've done. When I want to try out a new artistic technique, I'll do so in this journal. What inspires me is often affected by what I am dealing with in life. It's great to see this correlation. So I also jot down some journaling notes in this book as well. I really like having a place where I can go and find both intrinsic and extrinsic sources to inspire me to create.

This page in an art journal that I created four years ago is my "self portrait". I added the journaling around the fingers of my hand.

This cover was designed by Nancy. I love all the baubles, buttons and flowers that she layered on the top. To give it a more cohesive look, she painted and misted them right into the cover.  All this texture and diversity really makes you curious to take a peak inside!

This is a page from Nancy's journal. Don't you wish you could reach out and touch this? The textures are great with the combination of canvas, lace, alphas and transparency. The paints and mists and flowers add fabulous colors. I like the way she added subtle journaling using the alphas.

Karen shares some pages that she created as part of an art journaling class that she took. The class was offered by Jessica Sprague.  On this page, you can see that Karen is starting off her album with ways to encourage herself to express. She has a pocket to hold photos, journal strips, clippings, you name it. The wording "Art for Arts Sake" really sets the mood.  Here are some other pages Karen created from that class.

The class was a hybrid project, so there was a lot of printables that could be customized by adding your own artwork and journaling. Some info Karen shared about the class "each day of the class came with a prompt to get you thinking about different things to include in an art journal such as: lyrics from a meaningful song, compiling a 'mix tape' of music that moves and/or inspires me and using a handprint as a starting point for journaling."

After taking the class, Karen felt that it gave her the confidence to dabble further with art journaling. This last image is a page that she created on her own from start to finish. She brings together some drawing, doodling, coloring and writing.

Looking at these pages you can see that it is hard to confine the definition of art journaling. It really is using any form of creative art to express yourself.  Even if you feel you are not that "artistic", you can just let go of that and try some new techniques, and not worry about how it looks. This is all about YOU!  Maybe you like to have things neat and orderly, maybe you prefer to include clay, paint, metal. Or maybe you just like to doodle. Whatever it may be that helps you to let yourself go and express and share - even if only to be seen by just your own eyes, that is what art journaling is.

Want to find out more? Here are some resources to look into:
How to create and keep an art journal
Prompts for Art Journaling
Collection of Art Journal samples on Tumblr (lots of different samples)
Art Journaling - It's all good (includes a board to discuss art journaling)
Studio Tangie (includes classes and inspiration for hybrid art journaling)
Pinterest
Balzer Designs Art Journal Everyday

These are just a few links. If you have others, please share them in a comment to this post. We would love to see more inspiration!

Journaling about Older Photos

Cindy here!  I've been unearthing a lot of old treasures recently, including pictures from when my husband Steve and I were first dating.  I scrapped before we met (2002) and after we married (2004), but I stopped scrapping during the year we were dating and the year we were engaged.  I'd like to go back and get those pictures in albums.  I started with our first Halloween together.

I had so much fun cropping and arranging the pictures, choosing papers, and selecting embellishments!  It all came together so quickly and easily... until I got to the journaling.  I really struggled with what to say.  Do I write from the perspective of 10 years later?  Or do I write what I would have written back in 2002?

It's tricky.  In 10 years, a lot has changed.  Steve and I got married, as did one other couple from the photos.  The only couple in the pictures that was married at the time have since divorced, and two other couples have separated.  Two friends have moved far away.  None of us get together for Halloween anymore.  In the end, I decided to keep my journaling fairly general, mentioning who was there and how much fun we had together.

As I scrap the rest of the pictures from 2002 and 2003, I'm sure I'll face this issue again and again.  I'd love to hear how all of you journal about older photos!

Designer Showcase: Lots of Journaling

Welcome to another Wednesday edition of Designer Showcase. It's Cathy here, bringing you the topic of Lots of Journaling.  In trying to preserve memories, we so often focus on getting the perfect photo. Journaling is an important part of preserving our stories as well.  Think how great it will be when years from now our children, friends or other loved ones, are looking through our albums and they read the journaling and relive those fantastic memories.

You don't have to be an author to journal.  And you really don't need any special tools.  Recording your thoughts, feelings, or recollection of activities can be done in your own words, and in your own handwriting.  Let's take a look at a few samples of layouts with lots of journaling.

In this layout, I wanted to share some of my feelings about my husband. I used the quote "To the world you are one person, to me you are the world" as a basis for building out my journaling.  I picked different thoughts and wrote a paragraph about each. For instance I wrote "To the world you are a firefighter" and a few sentences about that. Then I wrote "To me you are a hero" and I wrote a few things about how he changed my life.  This is a digital page so it was easy to type out my journaling.

For this page I wrote about the coffee mugs that I collect. Some people, including my husband and kids, laugh at me for having so many mugs.  I really enjoy starting my day off with the mood they set or the memory they bring. So I typed about this on my page. Something that my kids might enjoy reading and learning about me in years to come. I hope.  I left a lot of open space on the page and typed  it all out above the photo. I then set a few elements in the upper left corner of the journaling to frame it. Since this is a digital page, I could allow the journaling to flow under the elements.  What's really funny about my collection of coffee mugs? I don't even drink coffee anymore!  But I still use them for my morning cup of orange juice.

Pam shares this page with us. The layout of the page is awesome, I love the circular shapes of the photos. The colors that she chose really highlight her son's shirt and the garden greens in the photos.  She used a lined paper to type her journaling on to. It gives a nice clean, crisp look.  Pam talks about what happened on this particular day, but also some general observations that she has about her son. A perfect way to capture both the immediate memory as well as thoughts about your child's character and development.  It will be great to compare several pages like this over time to reflect on how your child grows and changes.

Marlene shares a page about a situation that happened to her. She was a bit afraid when boarding a boat.  But as other's got on the boat with ease, her family giggled at her. I love the way she tells the story first person, yet includes the humor that her husband and son saw.  She typed out her story and inked the edges of the paper. She also framed the journaling with some buttons and elements.

Cindy has two pages to show some different journaling. On this first one she hand wrote her journaling. This is her preferred way.  This is a great way to make your writing and design all that much more personal.  Here is a neat tip that Cindy shared. She doesn't write her journaling directly on the background of the page. She writes it on a piece of paper that can be adhered to the page, This way if she makes any mistakes in her writing, she can just re-do it without messing up her whole page. Great idea!

Now on this page, Cindy had a lot of journaling that she wanted to fit on the page. She chose to type this journaling.  By typing it, she could adjust the font size smaller to fit in more journaling that is still legible.  Typing the journaling can also make the layout a bit more formal. Or you can chose from so many different fonts that coordinate with your page to add to the design of your layout.

Whatever you are journaling, it's important to remember that there is no right or wrong way to do it. Just write!  And keep writing. Write to your hearts content.  When you look back at your pages, you'll appreciate all the details that you recorded.

Travel Journal Smash Style

It's summer time in many parts of the world, and that means vacation time. Hi, it's Cathy here today to share how I create journals for our travels. These little beauties really help me with my scrapping, and my memory!

Whenever we travel, I always take a notebook to keep track of my thoughts. I jot down things we did, places we visited and laughs that we shared. These notebooks come in handy when I finally get around to scrapping our trip (usually months or even years later!). I can read through them and be reminded of all those wonderful moments that I never wanted to forget. Some of them I only remember because I did write them down!  :-)

Lately, I've been making my little travel journals a bit fancier. Instead of the little lined notebook from the office supply shop, I've been making personalized journals for my trips.  It's fun to do ahead of time when you are excitedly anticipating your vacation.

This little book was really easy to make. I designed it in Photoshop using digital scrapbook elements.  I printed it on a piece of 8.5"x11" canvas textured paper in landscape orientation (Simply folded the cover in half lengthwise to create the album).  I painted on a few coats of Mod Podge Hard Coat decoupage medium. The nice part about the Hard Coat variety, is that it dries with no tackiness and, once it is cured (only takes a few days), you can actually wipe it with a damp cloth to clean it!

I used 3 hole punch graph paper (turned landscape) for the paper inside the journal. I would have preferred to not have the 3 hole punched type, but it was what I had on hand.  I like to use graph paper in my journals. Not only does it give me lines to write on (if I want to), but it also makes it easy for me to sketch things in perspective if the mood so moves me.

To create the "binding" for this journal, I simply punched 2 holes through the cover and inside papers, then tied some twine through the book. Doesn't get much easier than that!

For a little added "bling" I strung some beads where I tied up the twine.

This next travel journal is a bit more involved.  I created this one as a Smash type journal. I created the cover using digital scrapbook kits and elements. I printed the covers out and decoupaged them to chipboard. I also used the Mod Podge Hard Coat on this one, so I would have the nice finish that is easy to clean.

This book is larger, it measure 9" tall x 5.75" wide.  Inside I used a combination of graph paper, pocket pages and envelopes.  In the pockets, I've prepared some elements that I can use to title or accent my journal pages.

The pockets and envelopes can also be used to keep memorabilia and ephemera that we collect on our trip.

I don't put photos in my journals. For one thing, I don't have a way of printing my photos when I am away.  I also don't want to take time away from enjoying my family and vacation to be scrapping.  But I do make notes in my journal of  photos that I really like or I know I want to scrap later.  When we get home, I'll have everything right together in my journal to help me get to scrapping all my photos.

I'm really enjoying taking the time to create these more personal travel journals. It gives me just that little bit more incentive to make sure I journal about our travels.  And then, when we do get home, and reality returns, even if I don't get around to scrapping the photos for a while, I at least have a handy, and attractive, journal to read and reflect on our trips.