More Pages from My "Teesha" Journal

WOW! I just looked back at my posts and saw that I started my journal based on Teesha Moore's Fantastic 16 page Journal videos in May. It's closing in on September and I still have a page or two to go, but I just finished this two page spread and I love it! More to come!!

I've used paper doll clothing, faces from ball jointed dolls, eyes from fashion magazines and border papers from various sources: magazine pages, scrapbook paper, etc. The pages are painted with watercolor washes and then rubbed with pastels. The pen work was done with the black and white Sharpie water based poster paint markers that Teesha recommended. I found those at Dick Blick online. I even managed to squeeze in some rubber stamp fishies and the moon face from Artful Illusions.

Dreaming journals

This journal page was one I had a hard time getting started on because I had painted the background a pretty bilious shade of pink, overpainted ugly brown, and was not inspired by either. The hands, the dresser, and the borders got me started and I filled the drawers with the stuff that's always in the dresser drawers of the houses I'm exploring in my dreams.

But last night I had a dream I've never dreamed before. I found an old art journal of mine that was filled with wondrous pages. They weren't painstakingly overworked , they amazed me and I wish I could remember even one of them. And now the circle is complete: dream -> journal -> dream.

Sleeping With the Fishes

Having a bit of cabin fever, Kate and I left the cabin to go to the library in Bellevue to get some more magazines to tear up for collage cards and art journals. We hadn't been to that library before and really liked it. We spent many hours tearing up the magazines and organizing our treasures. Even Kei Chi tore out some pictures. We played a little (I finished up this journal page I had been working on a while) and got out for a walk.

Journal Pages

I've been stuck working on all three of these journal pages simultaneously. For each of them, I knew what they were about, but although I felt the images expressed my feelings, I had a very hard time with the words. In the case of the mercy page, there were too many words that I needed to get out of my head, so it became maybe a little too raw for here. Whatever! The city page just flew together but I didn't know how to express what it meant to me. The words, cut from an excerpt of Architecture & Fear that I found on the internet, and just thrown into phrases that don't make a lot of sense individually, do a good job as a whole.

Journal Frenzy

So I don't know how to string these pages out so that I can write beside the one I'm referring to, so it's good they all have dates.

After Kei Chi and I did our journal pages using Suzi Blu's assignment/formula I was ready to do more. I had just gotten Holly Harrison's book Mixed-Media Collage and it contains a fairly thorough explanation of Teesha Moore's journaling process. She uses lots of things cut from magazines and calendars, so I gave myself the job of tearing up all the magazines I had gotten from the Friends of the Library sale. They were travel, scuba diving, and womens magazines and I tore out everything that appealed to me and recycled the few pages that were left. I had started file folders of found images several years ago when my magazine stash got to be too much so I sorted by those categories, added a few extra categories and after a very crazy day had a workable system.

As I was chalking up a spread in my moleskine journal in yellows pastels, I remembered that I had started an art journal a couple of years ago referencing an article I found on the internet by Teesha Moore - How I Journal. At the time I didn't much care for what I had done (January 10, 2006) so even though I had readied four pages with acrylic paints, I just put it away. Maybe some of you just grab any old paper and start journaling; I am always, always fearful of God knows what! So I found the old journal, smeared some pastels on the painted pages and like them a lot better. I sprayed all four (three old and one new) with fixative and actually started on the old aqua page first because I liked it the least. And therefore had less to ruin, I guess.

Over the next three days, I did four spreads. Maybe I will get familiar enough with the process to work faster. As of now, I am in awe of those journalers who say, "Do a page every day. Just set aside thirty minutes to work on it." I am trying to let the images I choose to juxtapose speak to me and figure out what they are saying later. It's the same procees that Kate and I were trying to use for the "soul collages," although I still prefer to think of them as "soulless collages." And although I am thoughtful of the words I add, I truly hate my penmanship skills. I much prefer all the glorious fonts I can use in digital collage.

Pam, the one with the window (December 16,2007) I couldn't find words for but realized later that it has things it in that we both enjoy.

Art Journaling 101

My husband Ken and I and our daughter-in-law Kei Chi spent Friday and the weekend making Christmas cards, mostly stamping but also using some photos of last year's snowstorm and some computer editing . This was the first time that Kei Chi had much success with the paper play which I love so much. When I showed her some of Suzi Blu's art journaling videos we decided that was something we might attempt together also. We didn't vary at all from the formula Suzi suggested since it was Kei Chi's first art journaling experience and the mix of art materials was new to me. The first thing we did was write down all the excuses we had to not do the journals, and when I ran out of excuses I wrote that my dog didn't like art journals. As we worked, he would not stop barking at us so KeiChi said that he really didn't like art journals. Consequently, he got scratched into my background. We had a good time and I hope that we will continue to do some art journaling together. I really enjoyed the enthusiasm in the Suzi Blu videos and think she could inspire almost anyone to try to make ART.