To me, it’s not all about obscure ephemera pasted all over a card as one person said to me.
According to Dictionary.com, it’s a notebook kept by an artist as a personal record of images and sometimes words.
For me, it’s my life! Literally! I journal my thoughts and feelings by using splashes of color with strokes of brushes, ephemera cut out or torn up, pictures, photos and just about anything else within my reach to create a feeling on a page. Then I use my inks to express in my words or doodled pictures of those feelings. Basically, it’s my life diary.
I also bring my love of art and art journaling into my scrapbooking.
I also create other types of art journals. Here’s a few.
Creative Journal - This is my muse or is it my muse influencing me? Either way, I see a flower or take a picture of something that inspires me to be creative. A lot of the times I will even incorporate the picture into my page. I play with the color and shapes and just about all my art work I sell comes from this musing. It’s also an outlet to just get my hands dirty and play.
Messages to my Children - This is my journal I write to my children. How proud I am of them about something, or my life lessons I’ve learned and want to pass on, or just my observations of how much they’ve grown or changed.
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| Goals and Private thoughts Art Journaled |
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| I journal words of positive affirmations to brighten my walls. |
I also teach and promote young children to create these. I started doing it when mine were very little with a daily question. “What color do you feel like today?”. They would take a crayon, chalk, or whatever and just color a page and I would write their feeling word for them. As they learned to control their hands to write, I would write the word on a separate piece of paper and they would copy the word into their Art-Life Journal. They were about the ages of 2 when we would start doing this.
Soon they were doing it all on their own. This not only helps them develop healthy emotional skills by expressing feelings and promote self expression through the positive outlet of art, but it helps them in writing and motor skills at a very early age.
Soon they were doing it all on their own. This not only helps them develop healthy emotional skills by expressing feelings and promote self expression through the positive outlet of art, but it helps them in writing and motor skills at a very early age.
My darling Kara has an art-life journal of thoughts, sketches of things she loves.
My older daughter Kallie now uses hers to write poems about her feelings. It’s their private space of expression and their are no rules on how to do it.
Each of my children lead creative lives in one way or another. They may be building a house or creating dental work but it's all creative thinking and I hope I had something to do with that. :) They have learned to appreciate the world around them, see the beauty in everything and all the lessons in it too. 
And my Grand-daughter Miss Bailey… well, she is my kindred soul who art journals in and on everything including fabric!
So next time you hear the phrase Art Journaling, think a little deeper. It can be anything you want it to be as a way of self expression and journaling your thoughts.
There are no rules here, just expressions on a page in the medium of your choice. And don’t think it all or any has to be on real paper either.
I am doing digital art journaling more and more and print these pages and stick them right into my books with the real life art pages too. But don't let them all fool you! Many of my Digital kits I sell are created from real life art right here in my office/studio I have always called since my youth, My Beautiful Mess.
Creating your own art journal can be made from anything. You could start with digital, print and add fabric, paints, charms, just about anything. Or reverse the process and start with creating a painted background and scanning it in to complete it digitally too. Even my Coneflower Art Quilt and other art quilts are a form of art journaling and I mix them all up! I sketch and paint of fabric and will print digital quotes or elements onto fabric pieces and sew right into my quilt. I will create templates from my digital work also and use in my sewing projects like Bailey's Bug and Flower Quilt, which is, in all practical things, Bailey's very large Art Journal page about her love of flowers and bugs in the summer gardens and enjoying her pond.
Learn to see outside of the box. Let your inner artist come out in any way you like. Don't let the fears or others drag you down. After all, we all have a creative artist in us screaming to get out in one way or another, and we do this for ourselves not them. And no matter how you choose to do it, it will be beautiful and meaningful. Just do it!
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