First Art Journal Completed!

I have completed my very first art journal!!!  I only started art journaling last year and my shiny new art journal seemed full of countless big white pages so its amazing that I have actually filled all these pages up.

I feel I've learned so much - about art journaling, the creative process and even about me!  and I can't wait to see where my art journaling 'goes'.  I am not an artist and before starting this journal I had hardly ever used paint.  Now I love it although I'm still pretty clueless about how to use it - but hey, its all about experimentation and fun.  One of the best things that has happened is that it has made me stop being a perfectionist - that's been really freeing and I'm still amazed that I can fling paint and ink about with abandon and not be concerned when the page doesn't come out exactly how I wanted :)

The last page in my journal had to be about this:

This page started with a piece of scrap paper where I had scraped a stencil clean of texture paste.  It looked so lovely I stuck it on the page.  Then I sponged distress inks, stenciled and stamped.  Here's what it looked like before I stamped the title and added the journaling strips:

 

The great thing about art journaling is using whatever you want, like the scrap paper with the texture paste residue:

 I love this big corner flourish stamp by IndigoBlu which I got free with a magazine subscription.

The girl with the swirly hair is another free stamp which came with the same subscription.

I used another piece of scrap card where I had punched daisies for the journaling - I need to work on my handwriting!!!

I had to add more daisies:

And then a butterfly which I'd had lying around for ages from another project:

There are so many amazing and talented art journalers out there who inspired me to start art journaling and continue to inspire me to try new things - thank you all.   I want to give a special thank you to Julie Fei-Fan Balzer who hosts Art Journal Every Day where we can all share our creations every week and who is such an amazing artist and inspiration, and thank you to Tracy who gave me my first comment which encouraged me to go on with my blog.

I'm linking up at Art Journal Every Day , Friendship Friday at Create with Joy,
and Creative Every Day