This week's art journal prompt revolves around old book pages. These pages can be found from books sold on ebay, at garage sales, at auctions, at salvage stores in books you no longer want in your own collection.
Here's what you need to complete this project:
your art journaldistress ink (suggestion: Walnut colored)crayons, pastels, chalks and (or) charcoals in neutral colorsblack sharpies (thin and thick)glue stickcollage materialsscissorsdecorative papers (in neutral colors)vintage themed stickers (Nostalgique is a good example of a brand that carries a wide assortment of these themed stickers.)Here's what we're going to do:
open your art journal to a blank page spreadtear the book pages into large pieces, paying close attention to how deckled the edges areusing the distress ink, rub it along the edges of each deckled pageallow to dry completelyadd pieces of decorative paper to the pages of your art journal using the glue stick (cut them, tear them, place them in random places - it's up to you) to create a background for your bookpageslayer the book pages over the decorative paper using the glue stick and allow to dry completely (suggestion: close the art journal and dry completely under a stack of heavy books)add collage elements randomly throughout the page spread (again, consider closing the art journal and drying completely under a heavy stack of books)using the crayons, pastels or charcoals, (choose colors that are neutral) and create swirl patterns and doodles over the entire surface of your page spreadwrite quotations, journal entries, song lyrics and other interesting text over the doodles using the black sharpielayer the stickers over everything in a random collage patternAdditional ideas to try:
- Consider painting the pages using a light watercolor wash (browns, greys, yellows, oranges and greens) as the background for your pages, rather than using decorative papers.
- Consider covering the entire page spread with old book pages without creating deckled edges or distress ink to create a background. Then, layer over small pieces of torn book pages that have deckled edges and distress ink.
- Try finding old book containing foreign text, math equations, dictionary definitions and other interesting text to mix up on the pages of your art journal.
- Consider doing watercolor washes over your book pages before adding them to your pages.
- Try circling interesting bits of text using the thin sharpie, then decorating and coloring the rest of the book page after it's been added to the art journal pages.
