Homemade Art Journals

So, I bought a book about Art Journaling and like any other project, I desperately wanted to go buy brand new supplies and stock my Art Journal Box with the perfect sketch book, watercolor pencils, archive glue, sharp scissors and on and on. BUT, in the attempt to break the pattern of always-having-to-have-the-complete-setup-for-the-next-project, I found just the idea in the new book to make do with what I already have: Turn an Old Book into an Art Journal.


Now first you may be asking what the heck an "Art Journal" is. It is basically a diary that includes drawing, sketches, collage, newsaper articles, magazine picures, etc. In other words, it's a super cool way of expressing yourself through more than just writing.


So here's what me and my Home-eez did:
1. Scavenge your bookshelf or favorite thrift store (shout-out here to New Image Thrift Store) that sells old books cheap or in the case of my favorite store, gives them away for FREE for the book that shouts "Make me into an art journal!"
In this case...I actually went and rescued a few of the books I had donated a few months earlier to the New Image.

2. Go through book and rip out pages for added room for embellishments or glue pages together for thicker, stronger pages (I did a little of both).

3. Cover pages with Gesso (a primer commonly used to cover canvas), lightly covering words and pictures if desired. We all mixed it up a bit.







4. For best results, use a blow dryer or fan to dry each page as you Gesso. Some of us got in a hurry and created an artistic effect where parts of pages would stick to each other....an art journal page all its own.








5. After Gesso is dry, pick a page, create away, and enjoy the fact that it is HOMEmade!