Art Journal Spread

You may have read a previous post where I talk about wanting to start an art journal. Well I had the journal with a few pages gessoed and ready to go for over a month. Every time I picked it up to try and do something in it I thought to myself. "why did you buy such a big book?" The pages are HUGE...........8 x 11.

I of course had a case of big blank page syndrome when I realized something. I like working on big backgrounds!

Alot of my work is done on 5 x 7 canvas board. Art that I make just to make art. You know what I mean...Most of the online challenges and swaps are for atc, 4 x 4, 2 x 2, 1 x 1 and now 3 x 3's but when I reach for a background to work on I almost always grab one of my 5 x 7 canvas boards that I keep already gessoed. Or I cut a piece of watercolor paper to that size. Now that is still smaller then the blank pages I have been facing but that little light bulb that went off. and once it did it freed me up and allowed me to get over the stage fright of starting a journal page of that size.

So once I was over that fear I still didn't know what I was going to do with these two blank pages. But I was on my way..........I love to use sheet music in my art so first I took a sheet and tore out some small pieces and glued them down on one of the pages. I also had a couple of packing tape tranfers laying on my work table. If you've ever done a packing tape transfer you will know that the transfer stays tacky so I picked one up and slapped it down on one of the pages. I left it alone for a day. Trying to think of what I was going to do.

I had to run in to the Dollar Store that day. And what did I find? ( I always find great stuff to use in my art at the dollar store.) I found a roll of wall paper border that had the most colorful butterflies on it. There were only two rolls left with this pattern and one was torn. So I grabbed the one that wasn't torn. Why didn't I grab both of them I asked myself when I got home and started cutting those gorgous butterflies out.

While I was cutting out the butterflies I remembered a box of quotes I had bought months ago. I put the butterflies up and started going through the quotes looking for positive quotes I could use in my journal. I found a nice quote and glued it to the page.

These two pages came together once I got over my fear of starting to work in my new journal. They are not the most beautiful journal pages in the world but they are mine and I love them!

The lesson to this story is Baby Step's.....You do not have to have your entire page planned out before you start. Start with one element, add something else to the page and soon you will see that your page is coming together rather nicely. I allowed my fear of that big page to keep me from starting but once I started things came together nicely.

Thanks for stopping by!

Arlene