For me, working in my journal is an indispensable part of my own journey - this fat messy book feels like a friend with whom I get to have a dialog every day.
This book listens to me with no judgment, takes any griping I need to dish out, receives my messy collagey experiments and even is kind enough to save them for future reference.
The big stack of journals shows me that I accomplished SOMETHING in all these years of rushing about, doing this and that, raising a family, moving from Maryland to Indiana to New Jersey, trying to make art and sense of all the commotion that is our lives these days.
and my book is my own chance for self-expression. Sometimes what I say is not what I want to revisit - and a friend at our group last night said how she paperclips pages that have damaging material closed so she will not accidentally see them and evoke negatives that she is working hard to keep under control.
What I loved about her idea is that we are in control of what is in our journals.
We can remove pages if we want, we can work over them, we can erase, and cover things.
but we are always free to explore anything in our journals - free to say whatever needs saying at the moment, knowing either we can keep it forever, or remove it later.
There is total safety in our book!
SO let your journal help you understand yourself more.
Comments are very appreciated - I love to know someone is reading this!
Of course someone IS reading this! *^v^* I found out that my journal is the best place to practice some art techniques that I can later apply in my art outside the notebook, on the canvas or wood. And I like the idea of the future possibility to come back to some previous days and see what was happening in my life then, good or bad (well, we can always remove or glue together painful pages, if we want to, we have a control over our journals! *^v^*).
ReplyDeleteI follow you, read every word and gets inspired.
ReplyDeleteHi--Can you recommend a good, sturdy journal to collage and write in? I like to use watercolors, acrylics, glue, you name it. I have a Raffine Sketchbook but I don't like the "tooth" of the paper--it doesn't take regular rollerball ink very well. Other books I have get all wrinkly when I put glue on them. I'm open to suggestions! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Sandra - my journaling research has led me to limit the amount of glue I use in my own book - the reason I use spray mount is because it is not wet, so it does not warp the pages.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to really use wet things, paint and glue and watercolor, you will need watercolor weight paper.
the best way to go is to buy some great heavy 80 pound watercolor paper, and bind it into your own handmade book.
hand made journals are a great way to add creativity to the process!
let me know what you end up deciding on doing.
best of luck, Em
i love reading about other's techniques, it inspires me too
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. I have recently started closing off pages of my journal with a pretty brad. If I want to share my journal with friends, the brad keeps the private stuff private, but I can still access it, if I really want to. This works better with thick pages. Thin pages might require more brads. My journal was a blank book that my daughter gave me. It has thick bumpy pages, so I mostly paint it, with acrylics.
ReplyDeleteI'm SOOoooo enjoying your blog, today!