Art Journaling for beginners | Art Journaling 101: Prepping the Pages - Art Journal Techniques

Hello, I'm Daniela. If you've been following my channel, you know that I love art

journal

s and at any given time I have a few dozen art

journal

s. I thought I would show you the beginning to the end of an art journal, but not in one video. so I'm going to start in today's video and I'm going to show you how I set up my journal, just a few things that I do to get started before I make any layout or decide on any color scheme or themes for the journal, this is how I'm going to take a journal blank and simply add some elements to eliminate the intimidation of that blank page.

It is also a way to exercise the book and prepare it because art

journaling

can be very aggressive. procedure there is painting and layering and opening and closing the books and different textures added to the

pages

, so these are some simple little

techniques

that I do. I want to show you the basic tools I use to get started. You may have some variation of these. tools, you may already use these

techniques

or you may want to modify them to make them your own, so this is the first in the art

journaling

101 series, so let's get started, here is a method to start an art journal.

Now there are no difficulties. and quick rules with all this. I want to show you my process and there may be things that inspire you that you can learn and that you can modify to make them your own and I suggest you do so so that no two art magazines are the same. They shouldn't look alike and you should really use it as a tool to express your creativity and enhance your artwork, so the first thing I always decide is what I'm going to use for a journal, there's no one answer. I happen to like these rave journals because they open up and I can open them with my clips here, but the papers are very durable now, this doesn't mean you need to get this journal if you have lighter paper, just understand that you'll have to compensate by adding layers. additional or pasting

pages

and that is totally feasible.

That's the goal of art journaling is to make everything you have work. This one comes with this little paper wrapper. The diary itself. Each page measures 5 by 8 and comes. with a pocket on the front with a slightly hard backing, so it's always exciting to remove these little layers of paper. I don't know, it's like the beginning of the new diary. It has an elastic band to keep it closed, so when I receive my journal. The first thing I like to do, just like with a new book, is open it up and really open up all the pages, this just exercises them and helps them lay flat, so I'm going to take a moment and do this now, once I get it do, my journal is a little thicker and as I add layers and paint to each of the pages, in some journals it will thicken completely.

The first page isn't really forgiving. You can try to force it open. I usually just glue it like this. I'll do the same with the last page this gives it a little more support and now I have my pages to work on so I can start working on the journal just to get it ready not even doing the layouts or the pages there are a couple of tools which I find invaluable the clips I have already mentioned I have a stamping tool it is a heat gun it is not a hair dryer it blows very hot air it is very loud the noise is terrible so I usually silence it or at least turn it down considerably.

I'll just give you a quick example, but this helps dry the pages, so if I'm impatient and can't let it dry, this tool is very helpful. Another useful tool I can have is wax paper and even if the pages are dry or at least somewhat dry, I will simply take a piece of wax paper from the roll you find in the kitchen supplies section of your supermarket and place it between the pages. , it is very inexpensive, so many times in my journal I will have several of these wax paper dividers between my pages. I find it very helpful, so now to get started, there are three steps that I like to follow just to prepare my journal.

I will paint with stencils. stamp with rubber stamps and I will make a collage now you can skip any of these steps you can modify these steps however you want the first thing I like to do is start with my painting and that is a very simple process so I will take matte Craft paint comes in all kinds of colors. I chose three colors this year that I'm going to focus a lot on for the journal, but I'm not going to use them exclusively. I'm going to play with them and this is for Prep Work, so I'm going to add them to my palette.

I also have some makeup sponges because I'm only going to use a little bit of paint. You can use a brush if you prefer fur now to prepare the pages that I like to use. Templates I'll use some border templates on some pages. These are just thin templates that go across the page. If you don't have one large enough, you can continue adding the template as you go or you can skip it. All in all I like to use some very basic shapes, these are just flattened teardrops. I love it, I always use random letters and numbers, that's something I enjoy.

If there is a particular image you like to use, maybe use suns or hearts. add this to some of the pages as well and then I always like to add something a little unexpected. This is a fun little stencil, only the areas with the openings will be shown here, so it adds a bit of perceived texture even though it's just paint, so let me show you how I do this. I usually start with my largest template, so for now I'm going to spread it out and start with the shape, so I start at the beginning of the book and place the template face down. and I will choose a color to start eventually I will go through all the colors I just take a little bit of that color on my makeup sponge I don't want a drop of paint just a controllable amount of paint and just stamp that image it will be kind of dangerous those are just some of the areas of the page and when I delete it I no longer have a blank page, come here do some too, I can change the color if I want but I'm just trying to place some of this image to distract from the blank page , so I'm going to let this dry again.

This is where this tool comes in handy. There's not much paint here. It won't take long. to dry and if I wanted I could skip this step All together and just take my wax paper, place it on the page and move on to the next page so I can continue this process. I generally like to skip some pages. I'll go. here maybe add this maybe every three or four pages some pages I'll duplicate so I'll do that and start adding the next stencil so now I've stamped all of those images using acrylic paint every few pages and I've got my wax. paper separating them only until dry.

Some people like to clean their stencils if I just have a little paint on them. I just let it dry. If you want, you can rub it with a baby wipe or keep it clean. I don't care like that, so now I'm going to go over the rest of the stencils here, the numbers, the letters and the borders, and I'm going to stamp a few more pages using that acrylic acrylic ink on different sides of the page, some of On the pages in white, sometimes I can add some paint to the existing pages and I'll show you how it looks now that I added the acrylic paint to my pages and I didn't add acrylic paint to each page and many more.

It's kind of a half-risk like this, some pages have multiple paintings, some have just one painting, and some are left blank. This eliminates the blank page and allows me to be a little more creative if this isn't your style. I don't have to do any of this, but this really works for me, so the next element I want to add to these pages is the collage because a lot of these pages will be covered with my actual art journal. I'm just trying to add some element of interest and again, just on a few pages, you can use any type of paper you want to make a collage.

The thicker the paper, such as cardstock or heavy paper, the bulkier the book will be. That's not a bad thing, but it's something that needs to be preserved. in mind because I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I would like to use tissue paper or pattern paper from some old patterns, even the instruction paper is very thin so I can tear it up and use it in my works and as you can see it comes in different colors with different prints. Here's one that I've already started using in other magazines and I just like using a matte medium.

You can use a Mod Podge, which is a half Deco Podge again. Look for the matte, the mat allows you to close the book without the pages sticking together. Now the matte medium here has a consistency like toothpaste or glue, which is very nice to work with to do that. I always make sure I have a bucket. of water so I can drop my brush on it because it's a glue and it will just destroy the brush so I like to just take a little piece of the pattern and take my time breaking it up so I do all the work of getting it down to one. piece and then I'll break it and then add it somewhere on my page.

When I find a spot I like, I'll apply a very thin layer of matte medium and lay down the tissue paper. down and then I apply a little bit of medium matte again. You want to use as little as possible. Now my piece went off the page. It's totally fine once it dries. I'll cut it to size. Another thing you can do is after you've finished it. its half matte down, you can take just an old cut up gift card or plastic credit card and just brush your piece and that just removes the extra glue. Now I can see here that I didn't put glue under this part of the tissue paper. so I'm going to go back and add glue underneath so it sticks and if it rips or tears well, okay, that's an added interest at this point in my work again.

I'll double check it here and it looks pretty good. I put a dab of glue on it and then gently spread it out and again take my wax paper and lay it down so I can continue working on additional pages. I may skip some pages. I may only use collage on a few pages. in my book I just want something that can add some interest to the pages so I'm going to do that and then we'll start our next process to add interest to the blank pages before we start so I added some pages with just a little bit of collage again , it's not the theme of the book, it's just a little bit of texture and something to add to each page so it's not blank now most of the pages have some kind of mark on them and I'm not done yet, the last thing I like to do and I do it sparingly is take a little bit of ink, this is dye ink, it's weathered ink or rust and they interact with water, so if I'm going to paint over it with watercolor or marker it will react, but that's okay, I use it sparingly , the rust has a duller finish, the ink is more translucent, it turns out it's the same color, you can see the difference here and all I like to do is just take a very simple rubber stamp, in this case I'm just going to use these little round dots.

These are one of my most used stamps. I put it in a block here and then I ink it and I can ink it completely or partially and then I'll take a page. This one has a lot going on, but I'll still add a little bit and just stamp like this. Now let me show you what I mean by it interacts with water. It's just a different look. If it's not the look you want, get a permanent ink, but I'll just take some water on a brush or in this Spritz bottle and spray it on and you can see it starts to bleed.

Now you can brush it or just blow dry it. That and I will do it. I'll mute this so you don't hear this loud noise, but if you don't mind the bleeding, then you can use D ink. I don't care, so I use it again. Give me a perm. ink if you want to stamp on your pages but you don't want that interaction with any kind of watery substance so I'm just going to go through my pages and add some stamps here and there so I've really added a lot of interest to the pages now off camera when everything dries , I will cut out the pages and remove the wax paper, which I will save because I will use it in the future in hopes of being able to work on multiple pages.

I have enough. It's time to do it, but I love how it turns out. It has already taken away a lot of worries about where I start and creates a very rich background. I could cover all this work I've already done. but that's okay because I might not do it too and that's what takes all that pressure off so in future videos I'm going to show you different techniques for each of the pages. I can't wait to do this. Oh, I love art journaling, it's such a creative outlet. those are the three things I do to prepare my art journals some journals I will do all of those techniques others I will skip one or two or I might modify them a little it is a fun way to take away the fear of that blank page sometimes with a blank page no I want to add things to it for fear of ruining it.

I've already added elements and marks and this way it's already started, now I can have fun with it. I'll show it. future videos on this topic, this art journaling topic with different techniques and different things that I do in my journals. I hope you found this video helpful and if so, please like it and make sure to subscribe and for additional content,consider becoming As a paid member of my channel, I give behind-the-scenes footage of my personal life and a sneak peek of what's to come. Thanks for joining me today.