EASY ART JOURNALING PROCESS! How to use collage in a mixed media art journal to fill your sketchbook

so it's a lovely sunny day here today and yeah i'm really really lucky with that so what i thought i'd do for this week's video is kind of continue the thing the theme that we were doing last week um in the sense that not do a vloggy type video this week just do an art journaling video i'm not going to do pages start to finish today but what i am going to do is work on this spread and can you see that okay because if you watched last week's video which was the art journal tour which i'll link somewhere up there then you'll remember that i talked about pages that i hadn't finished or i still needed to work on or that i didn't like so this is a page using collage so i thought we'd do like some art journaling ideas ways to fill a journal if you like and this is um a way to use collage and it's actually a a serviette or a napkin the cat's thing so i'm going to work on that and really bring the caps out and then maybe add some text as well in there so before i do that i'm going to put in the footage from last week of how i actually put the book together um the two books together the two journals together so i will slot that footage in now for you so i'm just literally ripping apart one of my journals and i thought you know what i'll record this because then i don't need to explain um what i did you can kind of see but you know i've had two moleskins going for quite a few years i've decided to put them together so i basically ripped up um sorry i didn't film it because it was quite dramatic actually but basically i've ripped up loads of stuff out of this journal i've still got some pages in here i'm still going to work and make it nice and fat but i'm going to put that to the side for a little while because i want to simplify my life so i am literally putting the pages that i want to either work over pages that i finished from one journal to the other and i want them all in one book my current journal um that's the idea anyway i've never actually done this before so i don't know if it's going to be successful or not just have a little bit more glue down there i'm using my mod podge today mod podge so i'm just gonna spend a little bit of time gluing that down yeah it sticks quite well and um yeah the the double paper feels really nice to worm to touch so sorry if my table's wobbling a bit but i've done a kind of impromptu camera setup so i've got a few pages here i can stick i was thinking i can stick that straight down and then i might just put some tape or something we'll see how it goes but if i can yeah i kind of pulled out the whole signature here um for this one and then other pages i've got i've got this one where it's kind of joined together and then i've got a few single pages and that's another yeah i could work with that yeah so just a mishmash of pages but basically i've got yeah those and then a few other of my singles so yes i really have um taken apart my other journal um and i felt a bit weird doing it in a way but at the same time i just really want one journal that i can work in um and just to have it really simple so i went for it this morning okay so let's get gluing then uh i've got like a one of those inserts just to kind of put in between so the pages don't all glue together i mean you can pull them apart after so it's not too bad but i want to kind of get plenty of glue on the edges so it really each page becomes really integral with with the journal it's joining if you like um see and because obviously they're both moleskine they're both exactly the same size that will fit totally brilliantly close the button add some uh pressure here sorry about the wobbles if there are any and i've just literally grabbed my camera and i've got glowy hands so i didn't want to um i didn't want to miss it to uh with the recording so just yeah bummed up my uh tripod thing in a most impromptu way but sometimes you just gotta you just gotta do it so let's just take that the other side and then close this side of it put some pressure on again yeah this is going to put quite a lot of pressure on this journal because it's already a fat one but this was the one that had more stuff in it it's a more um just rub that in let that dry so the pages don't stick together but yeah that's a it's a much more up-to-date um journal i feel with pages that we've done um so that little signature has glued in pretty well i think i can always add a little bit of paint in there just to kind of or tape just to kind of um yeah get that a little bit more sealed and i think it might need some tape to um to reinforce anyway so but yeah that's glued in quite well here to here so let's leave that that part to dry now because if i start pressing it it won't take long but yeah it's still a bit tacky so i'll come back in a minute and um yeah once that's dry so that's dry now uh sorry if you can hear a little noise in the background it's the fan it was really really hot in here um this morning so i um yeah just put the fan on and that's the helicopter in case you can hear that hang on a sec so i've just trimmed this one a little bit because it was a main page and they are slightly wider than this little one because it's kind of uh the part that blues into the cover so i'm gonna paste that part in there and then i've got um yeah other things that i've kind of placed in here um i just wrapped my brush in a wet wipe so it wouldn't go stiff and the nice thing about modge podge is it is it does dry a bit quicker than the um matte medium i'm finding i'm not a big mod podge user um i could never afford it to be honest because it's slightly more expensive than the matte medium um but i treated myself a few weeks ago when i um started the altered book um project i realized that mod podge would be the way to go so that's when i treated myself to a bit of it i don't want to go too close to the spine because um i've got a little scrapey thing it's slightly too big i think but um i'm not too worried about that i can always trim it with scissors after and got a bit mod podge on this side again more sticky yeah i think what i'll do is i'll just kind of yeah trim any bits off if it's bothering me um once it's all dry see how we uh how we get on i think that's worked it kind of feels quite um let's glue that down there it's annoying me kind of feels quite leathery when you glue these pages together but yeah i really want to integrate them carefully so i'm just going to take my time gluing so that feels nice i think i might curve the corners that's what i might do um where's my scissors hang on a sec so yeah i'll just kind of trim that little corner trim to fit who would know who would know a apart from the books getting incredibly fat now which is really fun okay so that's dry again i love it that the mod podge dries really quick i haven't cut it perfectly but i'm not too worried about that as you could probably imagine and then this one i was going to stick here and i think i'm going to leave the rough edge because obviously it was going it was sorry it was from this side and i'm sticking it this way round so i think i'm just gonna round the corners but leave leave the rough edge because that is kind of quite tactile quite like that so i'm going to leave that stick that one in there this stuff i'm sticking over it just feels really irrelevant now because i did it so long ago um i've been working this journal for years and i just i feel like i feel like finishing it i'm gonna get it in situ and then you still got it it's availability to move around and then once you're happy with it stuck really well [Music] just be nice to really have this journal to a point where it's sort of 80 there and i can really then go um a bit mad with them finishing it i can't describe to you how nice this feels with the um pages stuck together they're really flexible but um yeah stiff at the same time so i really love that so let's go back in with uh my little foxy from my spirit animals project um this helps me really push that down so that's stuck really well um that was a page i stuck in before i put the camera on um so and i thought the the blues might work quite well together with them this one this little bird and then i think this is a little it's a kind of little signature here so i was thinking just glue those two together and then i've got a little couple of little drawings to work with you can see as well the old mold skin paper was so much creamier than this the new paper this paper was lovely it really was and they changed it i mean you've seen me in the past when i am i've got some writing journals and i rip pages out and stick them if they're still relevant into a new book um and i love doing that i love integrating those pages do this on here and then i don't get bits because i think i've got a load of pencil shavings and stuff on here left over from the art nouveau girl that i've been painting i'm trying to work fairly quickly so i can go i've got the um two pages wet at the same time glue's a bit better sorry if i'm waffling here just yes that's gone in okay i think there's a little bit more glue needed oh it's moving i don't want to rub this one as much as i've been rubbing the others because obviously the pencil will smudge but i'm not too worried to be honest i'd rather it glues in nicely the corners are matching not too bad i have to say so let's just wait for that part to dry and then oh sorry i am i bumped you then a bit of coffee james maybe a coffee so yeah i've got this page to work with and again i might tape depending on where in the book and whether it's going to need some extra support i think that might need some tape um so i might tape give the book a little bit of extra support here and there as you can easily paint over the masking tape let's get that little corner i think i can push that now there we go yeah that tape's needed perhaps a little bit here as well see how we get our little a little problem there i might stupid tape get to the end of it and it all splits i just need a little bit though so let's see pop a bit just [Music] here there we go supported that little part so now you've seen my process of putting the two books together and all the gluing that went on and re-gluing i'm really happy with it but i must admit that i am going to need to reinforce some of the pages a bit more with some tape probably some masking tape which i will paint over but apart from that i'm really really happy with the whole thing and it just feels i don't know i've just reclaimed it and i'm really excited to work in it again and also i'm really excited to finish it so to have a really um completed where every page is is basically um completed when i look at it i don't want to just add something a little something you know what i mean i mean there's always more little some things you can add but you get to a point where you just think no i'm done i'm done with that page so yeah it's going to be really exciting to finish this book yeah quite a process the whole thing so without further ado i'm going to take you to my desk and it's actually over there over that side of the room and show you what i do to my um to my collage pages and we can work on them together and maybe have a nice cup of tea or something like that if you feel like it and if you feel like creating along with me then that's brilliant and if you feel like just watching then that's absolutely fine too did you know it's really therapeutic to actually watch someone else create so it's really good for our mental health and also even our immune systems so if you're not in the mood to create and just want to watch then it's doing you good too it's that whole important aspect of art that i really really love which is all about art as a medicine art as a therapy but not art therapy it's it's good for us it's good for our self-care mental health it lifts depression it does so many things and i'm not just talking about painting and drawing i'm talking about creativity so whatever it is that you create it's really really helpful for you to be spending time doing that anyway you probably know that already but just in case you didn't then i just thought i'd pop that in there but it is truly for me a real process um and i keep saying and i keep going on about the fact that it's not about the final result it's about the process and sometimes that entails writing things out and getting bad experiences or bad memories and processing it and it being cathartic and sometimes it's just about the pure action of creating so for example mixing paint on a palette and and brushing it onto your page the action of doing that is also really therapeutic anyway let's get creating before i start doing the old you-know-what so here we are on my desk and i've got a bit of a better setup here so it shouldn't wobble as much as the um footage so i apologize about that but as i did say you know when i was gluing the book together i hadn't planned on doing that at all that morning so i really wasn't prepared with all my my usual setup but anyway here is a couple of bits and bobs i've got out ready so i've just pulled out a few brushes um some white a couple of colors a yellow and a turquoise and then some matte medium to mix up my paint with a little bit and a bottle of ink i think that's um raw raw umber then i've got a few different brushes um and a palette knife and i'm gonna have to fix my brush because um yeah i usually end up buying quite cheap brushes i don't invest in really expensive paint brushes and the reason for that is i'm not very good to my brushes so yeah that that tends to happen now and again but i really need a big fat brush so there we go and the other thing i've got hang on a sec is i've just been into james's office and got myself a nice pot of coffee so let's have a little dash of coffee with you while i'm uh journaling and then yeah i've got my water most important old bit of cloth it's actually an old flannel that an old flannel or an orbit of towel is what i like to use and then i've got these really cheap cheap and cheerful tear off pallets which i really like because again it saves me having to clean a pallet at the end of the day and yeah just a bit lazy sorry about that um so yeah there's my bits and bobs and uh i've just um put these little clips on the book just to keep the pages as flat as possible and so that you can see as best i can and like i said a minute ago all i'm going to try and do is bring the cats out and any other elements of the collage or anything that i would like to keep and anything i would like to sort of have show through if you like so i can play with the transparency the opacity of the paint by adding in some water or some of this gel medium okay and i'll try and link all of this um down below or list it i'm not sure i'll link it um but i'll try and list where i get my um my things from and uh yeah let's get started then so the first thing i'm going to do like i said is fix my brush so i'm just using plastic free packaging tape nothing fancy or waterproof or anything like that and it is going to get wet and need replacing in a month or so so but i'm okay with that so but that'll hold it on for now because otherwise it's going to keep popping off and it's going to annoy me um i'm going to grab a bit of white um some of this liquitex i want a really pale kind of turquoisey blue a little bit like this color here to really pop out the um the cats and this one is um light blue it says on there you so this is what i'm talking about when we talk about the action of doing something is really therapeutic i'm just gonna go and grab my pack of wet wipes because i find those really handy hang on a sec i'm just going to pop a little bit of the matte medium in that as well just to make it a little bit easier to manage and then yeah just block out any of the background that i don't want i might keep that star so i'm not going to go too near that star quite fancy the star the other thing i'm going to do is i'm going to put my glasses on so i can actually see that'll help a lot there we go so yeah i'm going to go around the cats with a smaller brush in a minute [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so that's the um yeah the background obliterated um yeah and i'm going to leave that all to dry now which shouldn't take too long because it's um not too wet that's another reason why it's quite good to use the um matte medium so you don't wet your paper too much because it's not a um a water absorbent paper at all in the moleskin and yeah and also obviously i'm painting on top of a of serviette um i have to say as well i have no idea where i got these serviettes i think it was when we were traveling in uh greece uh and we lived on the island of crete for six months and i think i got it from one of the supermarkets there but i really really can't remember but yeah it's quite fun now you can actually see the cats and i hadn't really noticed the little baby cat in the middle so it's quite cute and then i've got obviously all these discombobulated heads which i quite like because it's like um the discombobulation of the current times if you like so yeah so yeah leave that to dry and then i'll uh i'll come back to you so that's all dry now and i thought i think it is anyway i thought i would add some um some text so i've got out some of my letter stamps and my permanent ink staz on and i've also got out some non-permanent ink so these are they'll smudge if you add a gel medium or water to them but the distress ink i don't have many of these i just have a very small selection and the um blending thingy tool so i might distress some of the paper um so i'm gonna do the letters first and i found um a little print out of the words you are not alone which i thought really sort of summed up the discombobulated heads um so i'm gonna stick that around here somewhere and then i've got these lovely a lovely little family of cats and it just made me think about love and family and connection so i'm gonna just i think stamp on here love is the answer just around on this side of the page so let's get stamping so i think i quite like that the way the um the text is spread out on that page i just want to really kind of keep it really simple um and yeah i think just the background thing really was that was the main thing on this page but yeah i think adding writing into my journal just makes me feel really connected to it and um expresses how i'm feeling in the moment and um yeah i love i love what adding text to a page does um as a processing tool if you like like we talked about earlier um so i think i'm gonna stick these down one word at a time discombobulate them like the heads i think a bit fiddly i know so i'll uh probably not really be happy about that while i'm gluing it but um i've lost that one there it is and then i can just arrange these stick them in a discombobulated fashion if you like and yeah so each head has a little word quite like that so i'll do that down with um i think i'll do it with mod podge so just a sec i'll go and get the um mod podge so yeah got the mod podge out to just stick those four words down [Music] so there we go that's those stuck down and what else do i want to do let's get rid of these um these letters clear up my space a little bit i'm all in there and we're still in shot yes so i'm thinking that's still drying so maybe just a little bit of the um distress ink just try a bit on the that is the what's called that that's antique linen let's try something a little bit darker this one is vintage photo so let's just pick up on some of the some of the textures on here and just make it a little bit vintage photo and that acrylic's not going anywhere with this layer and also because i used the permanent ink for the um love is the answer um that's not going anywhere i think i'm going to go in with a little bit more of a darker stain this is called walnut put a little bit on it's pretty subtle but um yeah quite sweet i do like the effects that you get with these the little blending tools i don't often use them i have to admit but i do like them when i do use them and else can i do i think i might actually use the this one as well this is black soot so this is darker obviously so it's got black on it so let's just put some soot on here as well i'm almost creating like a little a vignette around the edge and because you've got some not really nice darks in the cats i felt like i could go a bit more a bit stronger with the darks in the vignette so i'm going to have a little break now and then come back with um a little something perhaps right at the end but uh yeah we're almost there i think these pages are almost done and i much prefer to how they were looking um when we started so yeah and then i'm just going to use a little bit more color off here the palette just clean that off and yeah put something a little bit more bright a little bit more color on here just add where shall i add a little bit of color here and there um just to um add a little something quite like that pink coming through there and then i've just got a wet wipe very technical tool smudge it a bit with my finger and uh a little bit move it around a bit with a wet wipe not really thinking too much about this just yeah i guess this is where you could use something like um gelatos if you have them i don't have any i've never had any of those actually but um i don't have anything against them i've just um i've never really felt the need to be honest but um yeah if you have something like that it's really easy then just to add the light little lipsticks aren't they the gelatos or you could even use um i've got a few of the neo color twos the water-soluble ones so that would work and you could just wet it a bit and um and that maybe a bit i don't know to add something a little bit stronger maybe near the bottom to just add a bit more pop and i think for me that's just kind of um yeah finished it off with a little pop of colour just to lift it a little bit but most of it's really simple and then if i wanted to i could journal over the top of this get a permanent pen and write on on this part around which which i may well do at a later date it's quite nice to have these kind of little spreads ready to um to write on so i'm going to leave these pages like this and call them done for today i've done a couple of hours in in here anyway which has been really really fun really really therapeutic a real play time if you like a real a real play time for me so i absolutely love doing that i get a lot of joy just playing around in my journal and yeah i'll use up these supplies and clean up and then i'll come in and say goodbye so yeah see you in a minute so i hope you enjoyed that little process of um improving and finishing off these pages and whether you were creating with me or whether you were just watching i hope you enjoyed it and we didn't do anything fancy or complicated um i just kept it really really simple and i really like the um the shape of these cats so i might um redraw them somewhere else in my journal and i just really like the the words that came up for me today as well it just went all together perfectly so i really enjoyed doing that so i'm just going to have a little um lunchtime coffee very watery coffee i have to say so if you're having a coffee or a tea let's have tea together nice little thing that we do together over the internet and anything else to tell you before i go um i don't think so and i think this video is probably quite long enough anyway so so i'll leave you in peace for now and i hope you have a really good week i send lots of love and big virtual hugs and i will see you in the next one bye for now bye [Music] you

Channel: The Unexpected Gypsy

Views: 29,498

Rating: 4.975728 out of 5

Keywords: mixed media art, art for mental health, art for self care, how to art journal, mixedmediapainting, art journaling, moleskine sketchbook, mixed media art journaling, sketchbook journals, art journal ideas, art journaling for beginners, art journaling mixed media, art rituals, self care, journaling, altered book, guide to art journaling, grey hair, grey hair transition, how to get over artist blocks, easy art journaling, collage art journal pages, scrapbooking, art supplies

Id: kslAKxjnpXU

Length: 42min 49sec (2569 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021