My love of art journalling and art supplies

If you don't know already and haven't ventured to my Facebook page, I am a huge lover of art journalling. I love playing in my journal, I love all kinds of art journals and I love the exploration of self that comes with art journalling.

I really only discovered art journalling early last year and I have absolutely loved it, gotten frustrated with it, not done it for a while but then I always seem to come back to it. I find that playing in my art journal is great practice and helps to increase the skills I am discovering and thought I was not really that good at. It takes practice to get to be able to say you are happy with the outcome. Sometimes, the outcome doesn't even matter as long as you have enjoyed the process. I am finding that I am doing more art journalling recently because of how it makes me feel and I get so much more joy out of it now.

I look back at my first art journal and am totally gobsmacked at how much my art journalling has changed and grown.

So I thought I would share a few of my earlier art journal pages and yes I will show my very first page. I can see how much my style and skills have grown. I'm not going to show all of them but below is a small collage of 5 pages.

At first it was all about testing out new techniques I saw on a Youtube tutorial. I litterally watched hundreds of them and got absolutely hooked on them. They were what I watched morning, noon and night and anywhere inbetween. I would watch them while getting ready for work in the morning, while having lunch if I was at home and even whilst preparing dinners in the evening. It was my addiction and also became my daughter's addiction. She loved watching them as much as I did.

They were my addiction, till I became addicted to art supplies. I still love watching art tutorials but oh my gosh there are just so many art supplies to try out and when you see someone using something new in a video, it's like "Oooookay, I must get that and try it out for myself, because that looks so totally freaking awesome." Yes, I am still addicted to art supplies. You might want to check out my first blog (here) which shows my studio where I create. It is filled with so many juicy supplies. My next blog will most likely be going in to more detail about some of the art supplies I have discovered.

I already had quite a lot of acrylic paints but they were mostly general craft paints which are great but now that I have discovered artist quality paints, the craft ones aren't used as much these days. My daughter is the one who uses them most of the time now. Although I did have some of the Jo Sonya paints as well which I still love to use. I discovered Dylusions Sprays which were fantastic and I still love them but am not using them as much at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love using them and love the vibrancy of the colours but I have other favourites now. I love the Golden Fluids paints, I also have a couple of the Dylusions paints and love the Atelier Interactives and oh, I also love Dina Wakely's paints. There are so many to choose from and you just want to buy them all but alas, the budget doesn't allow that (well for this moment in time anyway).

Art journalling for me and for so many is quite cathartic and it really can help you to work through a lot of your emotions. I'm not a prolific writer so for me art journalling is great. I know that if I'm feeling down or just ho hum I can go and do something in my journal and I feel like, not only might I have worked through some stuff whilst doing it (because it can be quite meditative) but I feel a lot more relaxed if I just let it

flow.

I have learned not to stress about it if I'm not feeling it on a page, or it gets to an ugly stage, I just work through it, or sometimes, I have to walk away for a while and come back to it later, if I feel you want to. Sometimes, pages are left unfinished and that's okay. I don't get hung up on not finishing a page if I'm not feeling it or I've come back to it and don't feel the way I was when I started it. I have even found doodling and Zentangling to be very calming and meditative. I have a few different journals for different things but at the moment my favour journal is my Dylusions one. I love it so much and at this stage, it is the winner for the ones I have tried. I haven't tried many yet so I know there are definitely many more out there with better quality paper and I am keen to try them in the future.

Anyway, have a squiz at a few more of my art journal pages and doodles. Hope you like them and I do hope that you might feel inspired to start playing in an art journal yourself, if you aren't already. Remember, it's about the process but it can also help you to hone your skills and practice, practice, practice makes you better at what you are practicing :-)

I am sure I will be sharing many more of my art journal pages and am hoping to do some videos of the process very soon.