Friday Ramblings: A New Art Journal

What a week. SO FULL!!

The days start early and end early. 

I had renamed Brenna grumpy butt and myself whiny britches, but I think we are pulling out of that.

What better way to pull out than with some art.

And sleep.

 For once, the sleep has won out, but the art is a close second.

I discovered a little community on Face Book called Journaling Bible Community and the Pinterest page of the Blogger, Shanna Noel.

I was instantly drawn to using a Bible as an art journal.

I rummaged around and found this Bible that I have had for at least 20 years.

Which you can see by the broken binding and the general wear and tear. 

I haven't wanted to get rid of this one because it has so many memories for me of constantly going back to it to find what I needed to do those early child raising years well.

I found some packaging paper I have saved and took some india ink and a paint brush to it, once again reveling in repetition.

I dug around and found some book binding tape I had purchased long ago for some forgotten project and taped it to the binding of the Bible.

I chose three colors just for simplicity's sake and went to town.

I used acrylic paints and some acrylic paint markers and then went over some details with a black marker.

After that, I cut out squares a little larger than the cover and glued it on, folding over the inside cover.

I debated about covering the book binding, and then chose to cut a strip to glue over it to complete the cover.

Yes, I had to do this twice thanks to my sleep deprived self.

I added sheet music to finish it off. 

Pretty proud to say that only took one cut.

I finished off the outside with a coat of decoupage and smoothed it over with an old hotel key card. Then tried desperately to not think of summer vacation.

Then the fun really kicked in: 

In this particular edition, there are spaces that have small devotional writings, so I covered those with Gesso and went to work art journaling.

A little water color, a little stamping, a little Aquarelle Marker and black ink pen. Oooh-white gel pen, too!

The next page I just covered part of the devotional with white acrylic paint. I think I'll like this better as the Gesso I have is a little rough. I ended up gluing on a piece of sheet music that I drew on over the paint, so I'll have to try it again and see what I think.

I looooove doing this. I can forget all the rules and play.

No small notes on the side margins that I can't see.

No yellow highlighter.

No highlighter, period.

Nope. 

It's all about ink and paint and I even tried running a page through the sewing machine. 

It didn't work very well, but who cares? I tried it. Maybe I'll hand stitch instead.

hmmmm...better wait until I have more sleep under my belt.

My advice? 

Go for it!

 Find an old book, an old Bible, maybe an old dictionary or a thrift store book and go to town.

Use acrylics, stamps, scrapbook stuff, glue, decoupage, markers, you name it.

It's all yours and there are no rules.

linking to Paint Party Friday