Saturday, May 10, 2008

Confessions of a Daily Journaler

Traci Bunkers was the teacher in this class and she is also a published artist. Her journals are all very random with intense colors and topics. She kept yelling at us to just slap stuff down although she used another 's' word in place of stuff. I think the most valuable thing I learned in her class was to try something you wouldn't normally try and to color wash the whole page so it blends. This was my first page and it was all about coming to Virginia. I need to do another color wash on it so that each element does not stand out so much. The map is actually a flap I added and it says Hampton underneath the flap. She even wanted us to put stuff on the page and then cover it up so that you couldn't see it. This is hard for a scrapbooker to do. I did accomplish this though by accident. My receipts that I pasted on the page apparently are heat sensitive and so when I used the heat tool they turned brown and disappeared right before my eyes. This gave the page a mysterious look and I actually ended up liking it but it was not the intended look at all. You can see it a bit right above the map. I did do a second page in the class and it was more like what she was trying to get us to do. Lots of paint and the elements become part of the page. You would think that something this messy was easy to do but it is surprisingly hard to make messy look good.
Journals are usually private places that you communicate what is important to you and what is going on in your life with emotions and feelings about it. I think your pages should reflect your personality and be a place that you get stuff out of your head but also learn about yourself too. Some days they may look ugly and who cares because no one is going to see it anyway. Other days they may be beautiful and you will want to look at them over and over again. I tried Traci's style and my journals will never look like hers because I'm not her. My journals are going to look like me and you will see more of that style because I am starting my Art Journal Challenge tomorrow. I am excited and nervous because it definitely will be a challenge to do it everyday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are awesome Teri! I look forward to your art journal challenge. I will try to participate! Virginia sounds like it was FUN! Have you ever heard of Alyson Stanfield? ArtBizBlog? She has some kind of organized artist group format on her site (or she used to) that encourages artists to get together on a monthly basis or something. I would love to do something like that. Let me know!

Anonymous said...

No, I haven't heard of her but I will check her out. That would be great if you joined me on the art journal challenge. Be sure and leave a link to your journal pages so we can see your too. :) Thanks for stopping by.