An internet prompt

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This was the second page I made, and it’s actually in the front of my journal. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by my  lovely blank journal, not knowing what to do in it, so I used a prompt I found on the internet by Sarah Whitmire at  www.souljournaling.com

As I was so new to the process it was great to just be told exactly what to do. First I photocopied some dictionary pages, stuck them down and wrote over them in pencil about how I felt about starting a journal. Then I gessoed over them.  I found a black and white picture of a knight (Sarah gives a link to a site with the pictures) to represent the protector of my creativity. He is there in the front of my journal protecting me from criticism form others and especially from myself. I wrote some words on the knight indicating what qualities I would need to be creative in my journal.

On the facing page we were instructed just to write our own name in different ways, but I also decided to add some photos of myself at different ages, which I had first made a sepia colour using photoshop. Sarah had used Walnut ink on her knight picture and I loved the effect so I found some walnut ink at the art supply shop and  copied her idea, shading around the edges of the paper and of the knight. I love the aged effect it gives and it tones in nicely with the sepia photos.

I was happy with these pages and felt that I was off to a flying start with my art journal.

My first post

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Hello and welcome to my blog! I would love to share some of my art journaling journey with you. I’ve just discovered art journaling through attending some classes in Byron Bay with Zom Osborne , starting in September last year. You can visit her blog here.

I think it’s wonderful that art journalers can now connect and share with each other through the internet and blogging, and I want to be part of it. I hope you will come back from time to time and check out what I have been doing, and I invite you to comment if you feel to.

This is one of the first pages I made in the class with Zom. We brought in a photocopy of a photo of ourselves (this is me at 4 or 5 years old) and then painted it/altered it in some way.

Magical Child page

 

That is a photo of my parents at their wedding on the right. I was the 5th child in the family and was born quite a long time (8 years) after the first 4 and I was unplanned, so “appeared as if by magic”.

The quote at the top by the Irish mystic John O’Donohue says” May you realise that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here”. I think that I was affirming that even though I was an unplanned baby, I nevertheless have a right to be here, that I, like all of us, bring my own uniqueness to the world.