I’m pretty sure any creative person out there can relate, but I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately with all the possibilities out there that I could be designing in my art journal. When this happens I run the risk of shutting down or forcing myself into working on a layout that I’m going to inevitably get frustrated with.
The ideas, approaches and techniques for art journaling and mixed media are endless. And the available knowledge out there is endless in the form of magazines, books, blogs, Pintrest pages and YouTube videos just to name a few. The styles are all so amazing and so vastly varied I find it hard to wrap my head around something in particular at times and go with it. There are too many gorgeous layouts out there that I see and think to myself “Ooooh! I wanna do that!” They range from muted, minimalistic designs to bright bold statements and everything in between.
I really am hoping through this journey I hone down what is my true personal style. It really is fun to try all the techniques out there, but I always have this calling in myself that I want to make something that is unique to me – my style. Whatever that style is. I’m still looking for it. And it’s tough because I’m apparently not picky!
So I had to step away from the art journal for a couple days at least. But my art addiction beast was growling at me while I tried to cage it, telling me I needed to create SOMETHING, even if it wasn’t in an art journal.
I gave in to the growling creative beast yesterday and did something entirely different outside of my art journal. I made some awesome paper flowers following Jennibelle’s lovely YouTube video. It was very fun to do and fed my need to create all at the same time.
I had plenty of scraps to work with. Some of which were leftover pages from my scratch pad where I use it to either protect surfaces from overspray of ink or smear on excess pigments from paints, etc. that I feel bad just wiping up and throwing away. (My creative beast wants me to make more of said scratch pages to use as future scraps, as well.)
I just followed along with Jennibelle and her lovely accent and cut out various flower shapes ala the paper snowflake method. I then decorated a few of the flowers, cut and folded/taped them down into flower shapes, nested various petals together, glued them all together and added fun button embellishments.
I ended up with a nice batch of paper flowers… which now have me scratching my head wondering what the heck to do with them. They’re quite bulky so I don’t see putting them into internal art journal pages, but perhaps I can stick a couple to a cover design sometime… or maybe a mixed media canvas?
Don’t get me started on how I’m really tempted to try making junk journals. My bank account won’t be able to keep up with all the supplies I’d have to get for creating those (at least to manage the binding.)
Even after feeding my creative beast, it was still wanting more, and I found myself waking up this morning wanting to do even MORE miscellaneous stuff. I had this idea pop in my head to make a washi tape piece of scrap paper. So I pulled out all my washi tapes along with my blue 3M painter’s tape and taped them across a clean page taken from my scratch pad.
I like how it turned out and of course am thinking of cutting it up to use in a journal page. But then I turned the page over where all the overlap of tape went and discovered it formed a neat border and I’m wondering about preserving the whole page and using the opposite side as a full page design maintaining the borders.
See? The creative beast just goes on and on. It’s insatiable.
Alas I have created no more this day, however. As fortune would have it, I went on a short 4-wheeling trip for the day with the family up near Estes Park. It was so good to get out of the house, away from the magazines and YouTube and my craft room with all its supplies crying “make something with me!!”
Of course I had my camera with me, however, and managed to get a couple photos of some pretty wildflowers…. flowers that the creative beast is now prodding me to paint (sorry about the big unpleasant © symbol on the photo, folks. But it’s mine and I don’t want it lifted for other people to use in their art. If you’re going to try to use it, it’ll at least be a pain in the rear to edit out the copyright symbol.)
The creative urge doesn’t end, folks. And the creative beast is a hungry beast to be sure. Fair word of warning to you. But these last couple days of not art journaling have truly felt restorative for me, and hopefully I’ll come back with the energy to feed the beast.
Odyssey Art 