Blog Hop - The Journey Within - A Year of handmade art journals

I am doing a happy dance at the moment as I share with you that I will be a teacher in The Journey Within: A Year of Handmade Art Journals with book maker, Kiala Givehand and 17 other artists. The class begins January 1st and continues the entire year, and is incredible value for money!

Each month, Kiala will teach you how to make your own handmade art journal, give you prompts, tips and techniques for filling the pages, and bring in guest artists to share their ideas.

To kick off this great course, Kiala has created a December book and asked each guest artist to give her a challenge to complete this month. All these challenges are set up to create an opportunity to “Blog Hop.” play along as you “hop” from blog to blog. see below for the blog hop schedule.

My challenge will appear on December 8th. so do check back to see what I’ve suggested

If you decide to play along, let me know by checking me out on Instagram (@realityarts) and tag me. Use the hashtag #journeywithin2016 so we can all see your lovely work. 

Here's the blog hop schedule. Make sure you visit each person so you can see what they have in store for you. It is going to be an exciting year during The Journey Within: A Year of Handmade Art Journals.

December 1 -- Mimi Bondi -- MimiBondi.com

December 2 -- Cindy Gilstrap -- Junque Art Studios 

December 4 -- Tiare Smith -- TiareSmith.com 

December 7 -- Julie Baker -- Creatively Onward 

December 8 -- Amanda Trought -- Reality Arts 

December 9 -- Andrea Gomoll -- Cre8tive Cre8tions

December 10 -- Nicole Piar -- GhostKitten.com

December 11 -- Lisa DeYoung -- Mountain Mermaid Studios 

December 15 -- Kelly Johnson -- Wings, Worms, and Wonder 

December 17 -- Sadelle Wiltshire -- Tangle Vermont 

December 18 -- Barb Owen -- HowToGetCreative.com

December 21 -- Hali Karla -- HaliKarla.com

December 22 -- Yuko Miki -- Honeyberry Studios 

December 28 -- Virginia Simpson-Magruder -- Kentucky Girl Designs 

December 30 -- iHanna -- iHanna.nu 

​Looking forward to seeing you in the blog hop journey!

Tutorial Tuesdays - Pound Store Finds

Welcome to Tutorial Tuesday!  It has been a while I know, but I have been busy making projects to share with you and this one today incorporates my love of paper and working with my hands.  I thought I would share with you what I have been working on lately.

Here in the UK we have what is call 'Pound stores' or 99p stores in which they sell everything very cheaply, and as the name says either £1 or 99p.  I guess in the states you have your 'Dollar Tree' and I am sure that most places would have the equivalent.

You can often pick up a range of crafting items, not the best quality, but depending on what you are going to use them for can be quite effective.  I recently picked up these bags of all sorts and was attracted by the flower that was in the packet, it had a lot of waste and off cuts that would normally be recycled but some bright spark has realized that if they bag them up someone will buy it.

Anyway, it came with lots of different type of paper, flower off cuts, a bag of beads, foam and as you can see strips of paper.

Because of my love of paper and making things I thought it was a good idea to see what I could create with the contents of the bag.  Due to my love of making journals, I decided to set myself a challenge and see if I could make a workable journal with only the contents of the bag.

I started out with two pieces of recycled card, which along with paint were the only external additions, and I measured the cardboard to the size that I wanted the journal to be.  This was also dependent on the size of the biggest piece of paper within the paper pack.

measuring out the cardboard

After I had got the size that I wanted, I began to cover the cardboard in strips of paper from the pack, which would provide a base for the flower and any other additional decoration on the front.

I put together the pages and made 3 signatures for the journal, decorating each one as I went along.

Signatures being decorated before stitched

 With any spare paper left I made tags and a front pocket for the journal, I had placed a series of encouraging statements on the tags

I kept the sewing of the signatures very simple and with some of the shiny paper left made some paper beads to hang from the spine of the journal

paper beads and a simple stitching on the journal

 Here is the finished journal, I decorated the flower with a pearlesent paint and attached it to the cover, and finished off with stitching around the edges of the journal.

Completed journal

 Here is one of the pages within the journal that I have worked on, with a reminder that you need to take a break and dive into your creativity.

Completed page - take a break

I still have a bit of the paper left and that will go towards the next project, I also didn't get to use the beads, so we will see what we can do with these as well.  Try and get on down to your local store and see what paper packs you can find to make a journal from, that are inexpensive and encourage you to stretch your imagination as you use a limited range of resources in a different way. 

 I will be making a few more of these over the coming months, and towards the end of August next month I will be making another journal from the contents of one of these paper packs and also be hosting a giveaway, so keep an eye out!

Join me next week for Tutorial Tuesdays and see where your creativity can take you!!

Journal Celebration Art

I grew up writing in a diary.  My first was one of this girly ones with a clasp and a lock to keep prying little brothers eyes out.  I didn't really understand how to use it but would write things like my favorite pop stars names in, favorite colours and such.

As I grew up I would use note books to write my thoughts, the angst of a teenager filling the page, no one seem to understand - little did I understand myself.  My older and wiser self could have offered much wisdom to the 18 year old who felt that she knew everything about the world.

Off and on I would share my thoughts on the pages of numerous journals, the years passing, experiences, joy, and pain found their places. When I was introduced to art journaling I was thrilled, being able to capture images, or thoughts, It could be as short or as long as I wanted.  As I have matured I realized that my journals could be what ever I wanted them to be.  I like keeping many journals, I enjoy creating in the art journals as they capture a mood for me and can be as complicated as I require, and with each morning I am drawn to work in my 'morning pages' journal doing my 3 pages free flow writing - check out The Artist's Way Starter Kit by Julia Cameron.  Many an idea has sprung from these pages, or a solution to a problem been found.

I have also grown to love altering books and since taking the book binding course have become a fan and love the different types of binding methods that can be achieved, especially with the spine of the book.  I am coming to the end of my book binding course at Shepherds, the five weeks have just flown by.  Tuesdays is the last session and we will have made a total of 5 books. we have been using some beautiful Japanese hand made paper and cloth, I have been in my element, and I will share the books made at the end of next week.

Mother and Child with their Journals

I celebrate my joy in learning more about making my own books and created this painting which shows a mother sharing her handmade books with her daughter, who is getting her first book to start filling with her own adventures.

I am looking forward to making many more journals and sharing them with you here.  What creative activity are you looking forward to getting started?  let me know and share what you are doing, blessings!