Mixed-Media Art Journaling – Breathe Creative Journal

It’s great to be back with you all after a couple of weeks away. I missed you!!

While I was away, I found something really unique – Breathe Creative Journal. If you have a Barnes and Noble Bookseller near you, check there for a copy. Otherwise, I’m sure you could order it online. It’s printed in the UK as a traditional magazine which I don’t find particularly comfortable to use as a journal so I took it to an office supply store where they have commercial binding equipment. They quickly cut off the binding edge, punched it and added a coil binding. Easy! I also had them add clear plastic covers for protection. Since I’ll be using all sorts of art supplies and techniques throughout the journal, this might have been a pointless addition, but the cost was only a few dollars for the entire process. (I’ve done this same thing with other books that I intended to use as reference books.)

During the LIVE Drama-free Friday show, I leafed through the Creative Journal so the viewers could see the format, get an idea about the various prompts and then I chose the page “A Florist’s Flourish”. Since my dad taught Floriculture for many years at the local state university, I thought it would be a fun page to create. The jars were already drawn on the page with instructions to fill the jars with different floral creations and then add color.

In my collection of journals, I have several dedicated to specific subjects. I created one of them during the class How to Create a Coptic Stitch Bound Book s03e12. (That class is listed in Season 3 in the Member area of HowToGetCreative.com) I love creating Doodle Flowers and Leaves and I play with those ideas in my Coptic Stitch journal. Several of those doodles became my inspiration for the “Florist’s Flourish” page.

Once happy with the sketch, I inked everything with Black Micron Pigma Pens. When adding dots or heavier lines, I like to use a Black Pitt Brush Pen. I added a few birds and critters for fun as well as a border around the page.

Now what? I wanted to add color, but which supplies should I use?? I settled on Pan Pastels because I haven’t used them a lot lately and I don’t have very many colors so I thought it would be good to challenge myself to a very limited palette. I applied all the color with cotton swabs which allowed me to get into small areas and also made for easy blending. Several times throughout the coloring process I sprayed a coat of Workable Fixatif over the surface to help control the inevitable smudging. (This paper is very smooth and far from ideal for pastels, but as I said, I was up for a challenge.) 😉

Once I was happy with the color, I sprayed an additional coat of Workable Fixatif over the entire page. Be sure to do this outside as it’s pretty intense! For fun, I added a bit of shimmer here and there with the clear Wink of Stella brush. It’s hard to see unless the light catches it, but I know it’s there and it’s just fun!

The bottom of the page was the perfect space to add some journaling and memories about my dad’s profession that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Remembering is good. Journaling about those memories keeps them alive for me.

Below you can see my inked images (left) and the completed pages (right). Be sure to click the images to see details.

Join me each Friday at 2pm Eastern for the next episode of Drama-free Friday. I look forward to chatting with you LIVE!

Until next time ~

Remember to Get Creative today! It's Easy!!

Barb