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
