This may be way too busy for some, but I’ve come to peace with the fact that I’m a ‘more is more’ person. The squiggly watercolour background is actually one of my boys’ paintings, and I absolutely love how it adds so much energy to the background. The vintage postcard in the foreground is possibly a questionable choice, as it doesn’t really have any context, but I consider this journal a playground, and sometimes kids make questionable decisions on the playground. That’s how you learn, right?

One day this summer I went through some super old gardening magazines that I bought for $3 at the fill a bag sale at my local library, and spent some time ripping out all the images I liked. I used to feel like it was cheating to use ready made images in my art, but I’ve recently decided that most of the art ‘rules’ I picked up in art school, and along the way, are more like suggestions, and I’m choosing to go with my own suggestions now. When you are working in a journal that is meant to be experiments and play, that’s the time where you are free to buck all the rules and norms and just try things out. So far I have discovered that I love including textiles and embroidery and hopefully soon even quilted pieces in my work; I am not a minimalist, even if I’m drawn to that style in other peoples’ work; and it’s fun to cut and paste, but at the end of the day, it’s most satisfying when I get to smear some paint on too.

If you have been art journaling too, I’d love to see! And feel free to share some things you’ve discovered in the process!