In Which I Get Glittered and Glued

A couple of months ago I wrote about attending a demonstration on how to start and keep an Art Journal. (You can read about that here.) I was so impressed with presenter April Martin that when the art supply store that hosted the demo added her new workshop to its class schedule I quickly signed up.

For four Tuesday nights a group of us - maybe ten - glued and glittered, pasted and painted, penciled and stenciled, and generally had a grand old time creating our very own journals. 

I do believe all of our inner artists were released!

April provided all sorts of ideas and instructions on different ways to prepare our blank pages and then ideas on how to fill them.

I am not very fearless when it comes to this but as the classes went on I got a little freer and more experimental. Mostly I played with different supplies and colors - watercolor and acrylic paints and all sorts of products I had no idea even existed - to prepare my journal's background pages. 

Here are two samples of prepped pages:

And here is a sample of a page with added images:

The background on this page is simply a torn up small brown paper bag that a few of the art supplies I purchased came in. 

I cut the images out of sheets of decorative papers that are available at craft and art supply stores. Someone else has done a lot of the work for me! I just need to know how to wield a pair of scissors...

The process is to keep layering images and words and colors to give the whole page a distressed look and express some sort of feeling. I am not that great with the feeling part so I decided to create a page based on a writing theme.

I started with this...more decorative papers:

 Then....

....I found the bookmark in my stash - it came with the book The Typewriter Girl. I pulled Snoopy at his typewriter and the other artwork from various sources. You can't tell from the photo but the background is a golden yellow.

Right now I am just playing around with layout and I will probably add some more layers although I am just not sure how to do that without cluttering up the page too much. 

I like the idea of using bookmarks on my art journal pages. I have some colorful ones from the many bookstores I have visited and it seems like a good way to preserve them. For some reason they rarely actually end up marking my place in a book.

In Which I Make My Report on Art Journals and Little Free Libraries

Last Saturday I attended two events at local stores featuring local folks. Here, as promised, is my report.

Art Journal demo with April Martin

This was a 90-minute, free demonstration on keeping an art journal. April's journal is more a layering of bits and bobs on the page than it is keeping a diary with drawings. She has hacked a Moleskin notebook and filled its pages with color and quotes and cutouts. Very creative and fun to look at. 

She said she almost always starts with a quote or a printed image and then lets her feelings guide her as she adds color with inks and paint and chalk. She uses stencils and crumpled papers and stick-on letters to add texture. She lets her muse - and her feelings - be her guide.

There was no drawing or sketching involved as I thought there would be. It was all glue and gesso and quite messy but messy in a good way. April showed us how to add pages of different papers to the basic notebook. How to distress the pages for a vintage look. How to add texture and layers and just to have fun with it. 

Her message: You can't do it wrong. And if you make what you think is a mistake, there is always a way to change a mistake into a happy accident. 

She was a lively presenter. This was her first demo and it was quite well attended - there were maybe 25 of us. 

Below are some shots of the process:

Here April is adding pages to her basic Moleskin journal.

She began with the image of the couple and went from there.

This is closer to the finish. You can see that she has done some stenciling and distressing on the pages. She also added a quote which she stretched across the gutter.

Below are random photos from her art journal. She kindly gave me permission to use them.

Although there was no book connected with this event, here are a couple of titles I found that seem to fit the type of visual journal that April demonstrated:

The Art Journal Workshop by Traci Bunkers

Stash and Smash: Art Journal Ideas by Design Originals

Little Free Libraries

This small event was held at the local, independent bookstore. Three people presented. The first to speak was a woman who was instrumental in getting 30 or so little free libraries installed in a poorer neighborhood in Louisville. She reported that they were kept well-stocked with donations and well-used both by children and adults.

Another woman had gotten one of these little structures for her birthday and it was installed in front of her house. She is a publisher's representative and so has quite an inventory to draw on to keep her free library filled.

The fellow who rounded out the panel was a carpenter/woodworker who had made one of the libraries for a client using recycled and leftover materials. He said that once the library had been installed, the client had an ice cream social and invited his neighbors to introduce them to the new 'kid' on the block. I thought this was a grand idea.

Copies of The Little Free Library Book by Margret Aldrich were on hand. It contains a history of these structures, offers a list of construction materials and plans, and offers up lots and lots of photos.

What I learned from this presentation, though, was that while I really like the idea of the Little Free Library I don't want one in my yard.