Mini journals

I've been using my sewing machine to make mini journals with painted canvas spines. The pages are a mixture of watercolour paper, map pages, german text, music and scrapbook paper. A small journal will easily fit in my handbag to carry around. Hopefully it will mean I do more journaling, but some of them are destined for a swap

More art journaling pages

Here are some more pages

Bestitched fabric cj

I had to post the next journal today. Here is my page. The theme was wings. I painted he background and then machine stitched before adding hand embroidery and the butterfly

Journaling at Art from the Heart

We had the opportunity to play with the new Dylusions stencils today. Fred, Lottie and Shattered. I particularly love Shattered and think it is a stencil I'll use page after page

Art journaling: the next stage

I went on to brayer paint over my background

A mixed media canvas

I   meet with friends monthly and we do a creative project together. This month we did a project from Stitch, an embroidery magazine. We started by painting the canvas and adding scraps of material and lace which were also painted.   
Next we cut scraps for the background and painted them too before adding the teacup and spoon. Machine stitching (and embroidered words for the more ambitious) followed by hand stitching and buttons.  
I may add some final touches later but here are the canvases

I'm probably like most people who enjoy dabbling in art and craft as a hobby, I struggle to find time to fit art into my everyday life. I know that when I do make the effort I not only enjoy myself but it very much affects the feeling of the day. I feel energised and creative, rather than falling asleep watching television.
I've realised that art journaling in stages is effective, enjoyable and creative. It's much easier  to find just 10 minutes. Often, having found the energy for 10 minutes it stretches into a longer time, because often it's just hard to start. It's amazing what you can achieve in just 10 minutes though.

So here are the backgrounds I started this morning. I've also found it's helpful to do a background in the journal I'm working on (currently an old ledger) and another background in the small journal I'm going to take on holiday as a start for journaling with less supplies than at home.

Junk (Junque) journal swap

Today a lovely fat parcel from France arrived in the post. I took part in the Junk (Junque) journal swap on UK Scrappers. We had to make covers for a journal and 20 pages. We then posted everything to Rebecca who punched holes, swapped pages, made up our journals and added LOTS of pages and stuffed envelopes with all sorts of bits and pieces to add to the journals later.

Mine own pages were pretty simple but hopefully people will use them as a base and be happy to paint and collage over them. I haven't photographed everything but hopefully this taster gives you a flavour of my gorgeous journal.

Thank you so much to everyone who took part but especially Rebecca for all her work.

Julie Nutting doll card

I made a few birthday cards last summer so I'd have some ready when I needed a card. I gave this to a friend today