Art Journal Notebook

I just started working on a new art journal and this week Inspire me Thursday is about altered notebooks. Thought I would post my beginnings....

Purchased at Michaels, the heavy weight paper pages measure 7” x 10” and are unlined. Originally the notebook contained a total of 125 or so pages. I glued 2 or 3 pages at a time, so now there are 58 pages. I painted the pages that I had glued together. Because I am rather impatient it took me 1 & 1/2 days to get the pages glued and painted. Just couldn't stop once I started that part. I love the way acrylic drys quickly in Arizona's dry environment.

Next....using my digital images, I printed on: lace paper, tyvec, matte paper, canvas, ribbed drawing paper, lutradur, a substrate made from gel media- cheesecloth and golden’s digital ground, and finally a transfer created with gel media and golden’s digital ground. I also used pages from a dictionary, dyed burlap, wire, hemp etc for collage. I tore some images, cut others and started creating some collage and writing. I still have 22 pages that consist of paint only waiting to be collaged before journaling on them.

For the cover I used heavy weight upholstery fabric. For the front and back outside cover I cut strips and pieces of the fabric, and then pieced them together with large stitches. Next some small circular gathered pieces were added. I anchored all the pieces with embroidery thread. Then I glued the front and back outside pieces to the cover with gel media. I added a strip of crocheted cotton yarn to the left front. For the inside covers, I found a piece of fabric that waspieced long ago with digital fabric. I used gel media to attach the scrap piece to the inside back cover and added smaller pieces of the upholstery fabric to fill in some spaces.

So here is a view of some of my almost finished notebook.