Visual Journaling

vis·u·al
of or pertaining to seeing or sight: a visual image (adjective) photographs, slides, films, charts, or other visual materials, especially as used for illustration. (noun)

jour·nal
a daily record, as occurrences, experiences, or observations

Visual Journaling: An artsy-craftsy method of exploring thoughts, feelings, emotions, and experiences. This practice is more tactile than traditional journaling, and has the capability of creating a more visceral experience for the journaler.

To begin, get a sketchbook with a medium weight paper. Compile some basic art supplies - Elmer’s glue and/or glue sticks, acrylic paints, color pencils, water color pencils, and the like. I also gather ephemera that catches my eye or is meaningful to me.

Explore different art techniques ( a great book to help with that is Journal Junkies: Visual Ammunition for the Art Addict.) Your journal entries can be whimsical, brooding, happy, confused, whatever. It’s up to you. The point isn’t to create perfect artwork, it’s to look into yourself and help work out whatever you are dealing with at the time.

Check out these awesome links for more information on visual journaling:

http://visualjournaling.com/
www.creative-portal.com

Below are some examples from my own visual journal:

My very first page, noting the day I started journaling.

I was feeling chaotic this day, and it's reflected in the work.

Journal entry the day I found out my grandma was near death.

Exploring thoughts about my life.

Dealing with loss.

Scrapbook style entry memorializing Grams.

I enlisted my nieces help to create this page.

Celebrating my anniversary

Ephemera and drawn exploration of my feelings.

Crayons as Art

These 3-dimensional wall art projects were perfectly voguish for 3 reasons:

1.  Super cheap - I spent $3 on crayons and $15 on the frames; the rest of the items I had in my ephemera collection (ahem... for those that don’t know ephemera is an euphemism for other folk’s trash that you like a lot.)  

2.  Super easy & fun - each one took me about 30 minutes to complete.

3.  Super cute - If I had a kid, I’d make one to hang on it’s wall.  As is, these are for my sister’s little ones.  I think crayons as art will amuse a 3 year old; or at least appeal to her!

Here are the step-by-step instructions & photos demonstrating the steps:

~ Cut crayons to appropriate sizes.

~ Using Elmer’s glue, adhere them one at a time to patterned paper of your choice, creating the letter of the alphabet you want to make.

~ Choose coordinating papers to make a stripe across the bottom of the page.

~ Choose embellishments for the letters - I decided to cut out butterflies from the same type of paper I made the bottom stripe from.. tip: drawing on the back of the paper allowed me to have a clean edge when the butterfly was turned over. 

I also folded the wings of the butterflies so that they would appear 3-D.

~Adhere the embellishments to the “crayon letter” and to any other spot on the page you’d like.

~Using a word processing program, choose the words you want for the badge at the bottom of the page... print on cardstock or heavy weight paper, then cut it out and adhere it to the paper.

~Lastly, take the glass out of the front of the frame and put your 3-D crayon letter art work into the frame.   Here's a photo of both the ones I made: