Handmade Art Journal and a Layout

Happy Friday Everyone! So glad to have made it through the week. Did this one seen longer than usual?

(Click any of my photos to see the details)

As I've mentioned before, I've been taking two classes from the always inspiring Alisa Burke and I finally put some of the lessons to practice. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has been doing an awesome series on art journalling and I decided to make my own journal applying the techniques I learned in class.

Yesterday I sat down with the pages from a homeschool catalog and some Kmart flyers and got painting. It took a chunk of time to paint both sides but by doing more than 20 at once (I know, crazy!) I could start painting the backs of the first ones right after completing the last.

The paper has a glorious not-paper but not-plastic tooth to it. It's really strong too, which is a good thing as I'm going to beat it up :-)

Once dry, I bound it all into a book. I used page protectors to make the cover waterproof, duct tape to join them and sewed through the spine several times to hold it all together:

Here's the binding:

And a few more pages, the first two show the insides of the front and back covers:

The great thing about this is it's all the fun of a journal without the "scary" blank pages. 

I really can't wait to start filling it up with photos, fabric, ephemera and the bits and pieces of our life.

Not into Art Journalling? I couldn't resist making a scrapbook page with one of the sheets. This page was created with one sheet of card stock, a K Mart flyer and cardboard from a box of pasta. Pretty cool to keep it out of the landfill.

Wow, if you made it to here you are very sweet. 

Thank you. Have a great weekend.