Dani fills a blank journal with scraps and snippets. Pages of print fonts. Paragraphs she’s cut out or creative pieces she’s written herself, and pictures cut from specialty papers or photos she’s taken. Both sides of every page are filled with whatever pleases her visually. I see no particular continuity to it, yet I love paging through it. Or even better, watching her page through it, sharing it with me. I watch her face, her demeanor, and feel her pleasure as she gives me the gift of some of who she is.
Dani is one of my granddaughters.
Several years ago I found a bunch of small blank spiral bound sketch books stacked on an end cap at a discount store, priced very low. I bought all they had. A dozen or so. And for the next several days I covered the kitchen island and all peripheral counter-top space available to me with acrylic liquid paints, embossing powders and inks, waxes, buttons, tassles, metal thingie-bobs from the craft store… and I lost myself in the wonderful mess of creating journal covers.
Here are eight of them… all given that year as gifts. (Mistake, and lesson learned: don’t give art books to people who don’t write or sketch… just have the covers printed and give those — framed.) 
Wendy’s blog at QuirkyArtist inspired me to remember my love of journals and dig out these old photos. I have shelves and boxes full of journals — not hand made, but pretty — mostly writings, some drawings. No plain school-type spiral notebooks for me — they just aren’t fun to doodle in!
Art journals are though. A fun place to put things — our thoughts, pictures, dreams and wishes, our questions and discoveries, our stream-of-consciousness writing or drawing. Personal stuff.
Famous artists’ journals are sometimes published. I once borrowed Frida Kahlo’s from the library and didn’t want to return it! I kept it for a month, feeling I had an intimate portrait of her personality, just by looking at her drawings — mostly of herself.
The coffee’s on… come in and share your art journals, or art books, or just a thought about how you use (or love) them. If you’d like to, leave a link where we can see your stuff.
And enjoy your day.
Barb Hartsook
May 26, 2008 at 5:18 pm
[...] how to engage with your readers on a personal level I might write a post about Barb’s post on Scrapbook or Art Journal: Its a Personal Journey. To make it an educational post, I would identify key themes and techniques in the writing of that [...]
June 1, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Hi!
This post makes me want to go and start making journals, though sadly I would very quickly have more books than outpourings as my well has dried up.When I was young there was so much inside me that I wanted to say.There was a story in every little thing because I felt so much. In the interests of self preservation ,I squashed a lot of that and put it way for later, now that I am once again creating,I went to get my cache of feeling and wonderful words and they were gone.Maybe they are still there in a safe place or maybe they have just simply evaporated I dont know but I can’t find where I put them. My old Mum says”use it or lose it” and I fear I may have done just that!
Love the books, I can collect paper, color and texture forever and not get tired of it! Bravo!
June 1, 2008 at 9:26 pm
[...] inspired to create some wonderful journal covers some time in the near [...]
June 2, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Hi Lee — thank you so much for your comment. This site is where I began the blog, but I’ve since moved it to http://www.barbarahartsook.com as a self-hosted blog. Unfortunately I don’t know how to move your’s and Bean’s (pingback) comments.
Keep at your art — your words will come back. They’re not gone, just piled over with life’s other matters for a while.
I’ll visit you at your blog…
Barb