Collage Journals

Holiday Journal: Organizing

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I changed the name of my journal to reflect the way I’m actually using it, mostly for art making and a little bit of journaling. My Advent journaling migrated over to my faith journal.

That being said, because of all the Christmas season commitments, I have fallen way behind on this journal. So in an effort to catch up, I had to pull apart the box I keep all my favorite Christmas journal ephemera in, and organize it all into small bins.

I organized my bins in order of size and use, meaning what I will start building my page up with first: backgrounds, tissue paper, paper pieces, doilies and larger images.

What I like to call the medium pieces, the most used to build up the page: smaller images, stickers, die cuts, memory keeping ephemera.

The smaller finishing pieces: postage stamps, labels, dates, word strips, small what-not.

Now when I try to blast through some pages, I just grab the right stack of bins and go to town! I may even try to get several page’s backgrounds done in one sitting, then go back and decorate. I hope this doesn’t sound too uncreative, but I like a challenge and throwing things onto a page with high hopes works for me.

Working with some of the things I’ve been holding onto for years is really a big part of my process right now. It’s really about getting some of this stuff onto the page!

So if I’ve kept it, I need to use it!

Well, I hope that this was a helpful post. Try this if your having a hard time getting a project finished, it might help. I’ve had to do this many times in the past. I tend to get overly inspired and have too many open projects that need tying up

I’ll be working on the memory keeping part of this journal in the next few days, so hopefully I’ll have another blog post up this week.

As always, Thank you for the visit,

Have a wonderful week,

~Patty

Advent Art Journal: Backgrounds

~ Patty Radish ~ Leave a comment

This week I’m going to share a little about how I create some of my background pages. Usually I mix in some book pages and scrapbook pages when I make my journals, but I had a lot of painted backgrounds I needed to use up…and still do.

On the righthand side of this page page spread there wasn’t very much paint, so I was able to use a book page I’ve been holding on to for quite a long time. I love Christmas city scenes!

When I’m tea or coffee dying I’ll let them dry on large sheets of paper, you can see at the upper right where I dyed a paper doily. On this one I scraped on some paint, scribbled with gelatos, then squirted it with water.

Here are a few things I work with when create a background page: acrylic craft paint, gelatos (I’m trying to use them up before they dry out), and a water bottle for drippy bits. I’ll use 9″x12″ mixed media or 18″x24 drawing paper, or whatever is available or on sale. I think I prefer 70 pound paper, I find once you’ve filled it with paint it becomes strong enough to take any mixed media you want to use on it.

Once I’ve painted to my hearts content (or until I’m tired of cleaning up), I’ll add some neutral accents with small jars, rubber stamps, bubble wrap, stencils, and lines with my mom’s old pie crimper. (Funny, I don’t remember any pies growing up, she more than likely used the bottle opener. That’s my Mom!)

The other day I was thinking that some of the backgrounds looks like the Northern Lights

You can see how some of the elements seem to melt into the page and the neutral images calm the color a bit. I specifically chose a lot of muted ephemera pieces for this project because some of the backgrounds were so vibrant.

The more I work in this journal, the more things I find I want to share, I’m making a list.

Hopefully things won’t get too busy to keep up with this season, I seem to keep finding more creative things to do! Lots of fun, but a bit tiring.

If I missed something and you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.

As always,

Thank you so much for stooping by,

Talk to you soon,

~Patty

Advent Art Journal: Using Downloads/pdf.s

~ Patty Radish ~ 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to work in an art journal. There was a lot going on this fall: I was on a creative team,  wrote an article for “Art Journaling” magazine, did the bi-annual iHanna postcard swap, plus working on several crochet projects…then there’s my shoppe. Then to top it all off, I reopened my “home decor” Etsy shop. Clearly I have had a lot to talk about, but getting in front of the keyboard seemed to be a struggle.

I try to make a “Holiday Memory”  journal every year because I have come to rely on them for my Project Life albums (which are still gathering dust…ahem!). This year I decided to combine my Advent journal with memory keeping. Here’s the page I made for Thanksgiving:

A  little about how I will be sharing this journal. I used a lot of elements that I had planned on blogging about this past year, but procrastinated about…yep that’s the truth there for ya. Anyway, here are a few things I plan on sharing about in the next few weeks. I’ll start out with the pdf’s I used, then the painted backgrounds, coffee stained elements, pocket pages for memory keeping, and anything else that pops into my head as I go along.

Now to the downloads: This year I have been relying on these more than ever. It started with phrase stickers printed on clear label paper, to using black and white florals like ink stamps, then wanting something to add to my painted pages without covering the painted bits. You know I love my layering, but I don’t like always covering everything up.

I use Google Docs to play around with phrases and quotes, fonts, sizes and such. You can spend a lot of money buying words and phrases from people, it’s just as easy to make your own with the fonts you like, not to mention the words.

I find most of my florals on IllustratedFaith.com and KellyBangsCreative.com and just set my printer on black and white. I print them in color too, but not for this project. The angels, Madonna and Child, and the floral page I purchased from Etsy shops, I’ll link those at the bottom of this post.

Nov. 26-27: I worked in this journal all day Friday, ate leftovers, and napped, so a super simple page there. On Saturday I went to evening Mass, so I wrote out one of the Scriptures from the reading. I had started out in a different direction with these two pages before I figured out what I wanted to do, but it was fun to find work-arounds.

Journaling Page: as I have mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of sharing my journaling, so at the end of each week I’ll have a pocket page with tags and journaling cards to jot down thoughts and memories.

There are a couple more pdf.s I use quite a bit, but I plan to share more about those in a later post.

This is just the beginning of this “Advent Journal” series, so if there’s anything else you want to know about these pages or have a post suggestion, please write them in the comments. 

As always,

Thank you for stopping by,

See you soon,

~Patty

For digital paper and images:

Romantic Arts

Nativity Images:

Illustrated Faith

Clear Label Sheets:

Avery at Amazon

My Latest Obsession: Mood Boards

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

And it all started out of frustration!

Sometimes there are so may moving parts to my projects, I have a hard time remembering all of them…so I make lists. That’s great, but even then, I’ll loose my place on the checklist. And really, how inspiring is a list?!

“Happy Mail Mood Board”

As you can see this combines elements with lists, and even some room for detailed notes…game changer. There is so much more to this than words and ephemera, it’s also a springboard for more ideas (and probably a new mood board)

“In the Garden” ephemera pack.

It started with this page spread. I got flustered with constantly referring to my notes and thought instead of making a “memory page” when I was finished making an ephemera pack for my shoppe, I decided to make the page spread ahead of time to remind myself what “goes” into it as opposed to what “went” into it.

“Art Journaling” page.

Now, you’re probably going to think it’s a bit silly after all these years to need a reminder of the elements that go into one of my page spreads, but it’s not. When I decide to create a page spread I’ll usually go through some of my old favorite art journals for ideas, especially if things aren’t clicking.

Now I have an idea book to refer to when (not if!) I get stuck!

If you look up “Mood Board” on the internet, you will see these used for home decor  and fashion ideas, I think you can use them for just about anything creative you are working on, like cards, a quilt, or even a crochet project.

The beauty of this is there’s no more hunting around for the perfect art journal for inspiration, it’s always where I can find it, right above (or on) my desk.

I made this journal by printing “dot grid” onto white card stock and  binding it with the covers of a large vintage book, but you can make something like this in a binder, an art journal, or something to hang on your wall.

I have quite a few more ideas for ephemera packs and other projects, so this may become a series, so I hope you are as excited about my new obsession as I am! 🙂

As always,

Thank you so much for stopping by,

Have a great day!

~Patty

 

Junk Journal Pages

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

What happened to July!? It turned into one of those months that everything happened, I had a hard time squeezing everything into it…guess the blog didn’t make it. Lol!

I’ve been trying to keep up with the downsizing project, and it’s actually been pretty fun, especially in my craft rooms…Yes, I have two now 🙂

Making the time to finish up olde junk journals is on my priority list right now. I’m afraid to look at how old this one is, I’m sure there is a date in there somewhere.

I’m happy to say that I actually journaled on that card in the pocket, something that I don’t do unless I have something on my mind that just won’t settle. Me hubs (my husband) has had a couple of health issues this month, so that took a little air out of my tires. But, things are looking up as we work through it.

I spun my wheels on a few projects that didn’t seem worth the time this month, but water under the bridge, it kept me busy.

To the point, this is why I started art journaling to begin with. The combination of art therapy and journaling is the perfect fit for me. I sent in an art journal to Stampington’s “Art Journaling” magazine a few weeks ago, hopefully that won’t turn into personal drama, my last one was sent back saying “thanks but no thanks”.

Well, I just wanted to check back in and say hello. I’ll keep working on downsizing olde art journals and hopefully take the time to post as I move along.

As always, Thank you so much for stopping by,

Have a wonderful rest of your week,

~Patty