My first Art Journal Page

I know that the next subject I will do in my Diploma involves keeping a Journal which is something I have always struggled with.
Even journalling in my scrapping is something I struggle with.
It was ingrained in as a teen and young adult to not record my hope and dreams, my feelings, events, etc as some may read it and there could be consequences.
I feel it is important I overcome this as reading through old journals are great when you are older, or for your kids when you are old, ill or gone.  Downer but true.
I feel journalling is as important as photos if not more but I just can't do it.
Last year I started looking at Art Journalling but didn't venture into it.
This year I have jumped in I have joined Documented Life Project 2015 that is through Art Of The 5th and Journal Journey 2015 Driver Reviver.
I have used the prompts/challenges/techniques from both to create my first page.


One of the prompts from Documented Life was book paper, at first I couldn't find the old damaged book I had set aside in my craft area (things have been moved around a lot over Christmas), so I thought thank goodness I haven't recycled the boys old school books yet.
I sorted them into various piles of usefulness and decided the boys should join me on this journey.

So I decided to upcycle books that either had not been used or only had a couple of pages used (they stick a lot of things in their books at school so ones with lots of things already stuck in wouldn't work).
I glued the books together and my next step is to glue 2 pages at a time together to give them a thicker surface, then they can gesso and start creating.
I have used a mix of Year, 1, Year 2 and Year 3/4 books, the lines aren't important as they will be covered. 
I wont be creating a cover until later in the year as I want to be sure they won't need a fourth book added.
I keep books from the year before for them to use up any left over pages for their Occupational Therapy.  C's 3/4 books from the last 2 years will be used by Enow as C is going to need Year 5.  E used C's old Year 2 books last year.  No idea why Year 1 were still in their collection.



The first technique for Journal Journey Driver Reviver involved Crayon Resist and the prompt was White with 2.
Here are the tags created used this, I wasn't happy with the one on the left so used the same stamps again but then loved my first one.






Following the book paper prompt I used part of E's homework from one week last year, some paper from a Year 1 book, paper from a damaged book, part of the Australian School Holidays section of a 2015 diary, part of a personal information page from filofax inserts, the word List from my November To Do List and Music score paper from my daughter's book she composes in (I couldn't bring myself to tear anything out she had written on).











I added a larger version of the Journal Journey Driver Reviver prompt to my Documented Life prompt, using the same colours as my tags as I intended to use a tag on this page.
I had difficulty inking directly onto the page.















I added my tag, some coordinating washi and my Goals (the other prompt from Documented Life) and was calling this finished.

















But I felt it needed bling so I added some bling to it.


















This was so much fun and very therapeutic.
I used to think I wasn't creative or artistic until I found scrapping but even then with the use of tools discovering I was creative I didn't think I could call myself artistic since I can't draw (due to my hand issues) but through this I am starting to realise it doesn't matter that I can barely draw a stick figure we all have a artist inside us we just have to find a way to let that artist out.
If you have never tried this, give it a go, just play and create and enjoy yourself.