Art JournaL

I always wanted to make art journal, and what a better time to start than my birthday. I got a spiral bound water colour book and started sealing the pages with gesso before my birthday. When my birthday cards and photos started coming in then I was ready to play. Mind you, I didn't know what to do and what you do these days if you want to learn something new. Yes you guessed it, YouTube it! I had the YouTube playing on my TV while I was messing (messing is the word) with gesso, matte medium, tubes of colour, glue, photos and papers. It was a real mess, but really fun! My birthday journal wasn't that good I must say, so when Roxanne offered an online workshop on Art Journals I signed up and started learning from the basics. 

I have some photos of both my birthday journal and the art journal here to share with you. Enjoy! 

Here are both of the journals. The one on the left is my art journal from Roxanne's online workshop. The dark one is my birthday journal. I will make the cover for it later. I'm thinking, something BORO!

The photo of me and my colleagues at morning tea on my birthday. These guys are the most precious friends I have at work. Some of them are members of my weekly craft sessions.

Journal pages using birthday cards and notes from Jacky and Myra, thanks ladies. They are so special and will forever be in my birthday journal.

More cards, on the left from Linda in the US and on the right is one from Ben, my new colleague. 

DH and DDIL gave me a surprised trip to be with my DGC that weekend and here is a photo of the three of us. 

A card from Geo, a dear friend and my blog reader who never forgets my birthday. Thanks Geo, I love this card.

And the last one is this handmade card from Janine all the way from Abu Dhabi. Thanks Janine, this is so special!

Now for my art journal. The theme for this journal is "eucalyptus spring". It's related to eco-dyeing using eucalyptus leaves that I can easily gather on my daily walk at my university.

In the workshop, we started of with gathering everything we need for the theme of our journal. Mine would be leaves, sticks and gum nuts. We started working with the base for the book. 

Next we were making the pages. I thought I would add related things for my Australian daily life. Tea and coffee are something I have everyday so they have to be added into my journal.

On one of the walls at the end of our driveway I planted this creeper/vine Muehlenbeckia florulentia that I use for basket weaving. I love this plant and use it for a lot of things including Christmas decorations and ornaments. I coiled the vine into a wreath and left it to dry. I painted over it with matt media and glued it to one of the  journal pages.

This page represented my workplace. I collected everything from and around my work. Being a university library, there are so many papers and out of date brochures. It's so nice to be able to recycle them. 

Birds, yes I have to have birds in my journal. Here in Australia there are so many birds. They make amazing sounds, but they can be pests too. In our backyard they love digging the mulch looking for worms making a real mess sometimes. Putting them on the journal page is the way to go!

A little book is part of the lesson. We made a little book to go inside the journal, cute! I received some thank you cards when I volunteered at the basket makers, so I added them to my little book.

One of the pages made into a frame. You can make them out of any picture you find on the internet. I then added a bird and flowers in the frame to make them into a picture. BTW, you can see everyone's journal on Flickr page here. 

It looks like I don't have anything to blog lately, but really, I have been busy knitting, dyeing, weaving, stitching and more dyeing. Finding the time to blog is hard sometimes. I need another few days in a week to do everything!

Until next time
Nat