Happy New Year - a chance for a new voyage of crafty discovery!

Happy New Year everyone! I always find I am amazed and slightly daunted when we reach the turn of another year so quickly. Despite the fact I know I don't really stick with new year resolutions, I always try to have some ideas of things I will try to do improve myself, both in life in general and on the crafting front!!!!

On the crafting front I really want to try to relax more into experimentation and art journalling is the territory I want to explore more. When I was on holiday in September, I found this old ledger and it seemed perfect for my plans. It is a little battered and has been used a little to keep records of sea voyages, but only on a very few pages. It it indexed and has lovely marbled end pages.
 

I started my first page yesterday and found it very daunting. I was led to my first theme by some words on the first page. I was about to paint them all out when I realised how appropriate some of them were to my plans and this led me to think about making a wave and ocean themed page to reflect my journey into journalling.
 

Now I know journalling is supposed to be very spontaneous and in a sense being led by these words was pretty spontaneous for me! Last year I took an on line journalling course Embellishing Edges and Text  and one of the things Valerie Sjodin uses to shape projects is a set of French Curves, so I used these to help me draw my waves and then colour them with my Peerless watercolour paints, adding some shading with Pan Pastels and my Prismacolour pencils. I added some ocean themed words with my Pitt pens. I did make a bit of a botch up and ended up patching a bit onto my page to cover up some lettering I didn't like much. My little perfectionist imp gives me a hard time sometimes.

I felt something was missing and made some little fish out of metal tape put through an embossing folder and coloured with Vintaj Paina inks and Treasure Gold paste before being stuck into place. I finally added some Imagination Crafts sparkle medium with my finger for some shine and I was quite pleased with the watery effect it gave and it dried beautifully flat too.

Anyway, this page is the end result, which I was tempted not to share at all as it is so far from what I consider to be an acceptable standard of work to open up to scrutiny, but then I would have failed at the first hurdle with what jounrnalling is all supposed to be about really.  
 

 

So I have at least started in my journalling voyage. I have been building up to it over the last few months with this book which takes me completely out of my comfort zone.

 

 

I think this is because I find the the ready coloured "blank" pages to inspire intereaction quite messy!

 

 

However, the book does have some useful prompts to get you to think about what you want to get out of journalling and get doodling in a relaxed way which I tried to do here!

 

 

 

Above all for me the point is to enjoy the freedom to experiment and play and I did feel a bit of that at times when I was playing with my different colouring mediums yesterday which is what this is all about for me, building confidence and letting go.

 

 

I have also ordered the first 4 Kate Crane art journalling DVDs which have been on offer over Christmas at a bargain price and I am sure I will get some great inspiration there too.

 

Whatever you have planned in your crafty endeavours for 2014, I hope you really have a great and fulfilling journey and  enjoy every moment.

 

Elaine x