I have been pondering and obsessing over this question for quite a while now. About 8 years ago I created my first full journal. At that time I was working through some personal stuff ( marriage breakup after 30 years of marriage). It really helped me to clarify thoughts and feelings I was having. I got up each day cooked breakfast and while I was eating it, I journaled. I just flippped through magazines and ripped out any pictures that called to me and stuck them in the page and then I journaled. Here are a couple pages from that time.

Later on I started another book and basically did the same. However I have come to hate the shiny magazine pictures. I think that’s when I decided I will have to learn to draw. Not that I think I love the look of sketched pictures in journals much…..but just as a way of having not to use magazines. WEird!

Recently I reserved some books about drawing in a journal from the library. I got one by Dan price called “How to make a journal of your life”. The library charged me $5.10 for getting it from another library. I was happy with that, however this book is TINY! I really did not get much out of it. I also got “Everday Matters” by Danny Gregory. It really was not much better in turns of usefullness for me. I think Tracy Bunkers book “The art journal workshop was the most helpful. Funny that as I have not been that attracted to her art in the past, but for some reason after reading the book , it made me “let go” and not be so concerned about how my art looks.

I then did backgrounds in a journal, using paint and stencils and just really abstract art which I enjoyed . I found that it was hard to journal on those pages though. Then someone close to me came along and mentioned something about how they were not pretty. Then I went through the thoughts of: “did it have to be pretty to make me happy??” Is it anyone else’s business what my journal pages look like ???

Then I had lots of thoughts about ” did I really want to journal”….or was it that I just loved the rustic look of finished journals and just want to have a collection of them? Amazing how when you are pondering on something……..you find the information you need ( seemingly out of the blue).

Here is the blog post I found yesterday that really helped me. I hope it may help you too if you are looking to find your own style. The post is a guest post by Karen Grunberg on Julie Balzer blog.

My opinion is that her new finished journal pages still look like Dina Wakely‘s pages but theta may be because no one else seems to leave the white backgrounds on the pages, and of course she wont stop developing her journal pages as she goes along. But I do like how she suspended the  ( unwritten rules) in her head about how she needed to journal.

Here is a video of Roben- Marie Smiths journaling

I have now decided to also work on pages out of the journal itself and then glue them in later on. That way I can sew on them if I like and there seems more freedom to me to having a loose page to work on. The other thing I will be looking at is the size of the page, I may change to a larger page. I also want to use a technique that doesn’t make too much mess, that way I wont hesitate to get started in the mornings.

My goal is to have my art journaling as something I do automatically everyday, so I have a record of the day before…….the journal part only needs to be a paragragh. It seems important to me to actually record something about what I do each day, but because its not always something exciting, it doesn’t need to be long. The background will be important in that it has to be something I love and not look like anyone else’s journal pages.

Another thought I have been having is that most journaler’s have more than one journal going at a time. They may have one for doodling, one for journaling personal thoughts in and then others for lists or more arty work. Right now I choose to just have one as I want to have time in my day to make other art works as well.

I would love to hear from you as to how you found or are struggling to find your own art journaling style. Do you agree or disagree with me, that you need to find your own unique style?