Stacey Marie

i just ran across this inspiring piece on flickr – there’s a whole group of people art journaling every day. this was such a cool mini journal. click to her photostream for more views of it.

how cool is that? and the fact that it’s mini means you don’t have to do something BIG every day!

if there’s anything you know about me, it’s that i adore moo cards. because of this, i couldn’t resist attaching a little MOO envelope that one of my moo card keychain cases came in to the front inside cover of the journal i sent on its way. of course, i then filled it with my moo cards and i wrote a little note suggesting that you take one, leave one or abandon them in some random place (a coffee shop springs to mind). i hope you guys will do so!

It has made itself at home on my desk though

The first post answered a question Polly asked which I quite often ask myself “where is home”. I think it is significant that you three are all imports to your current country… you will probably have a deeper view of the idea of home than I do…

I’m excited about exploring the other ideas she has in there!

And ladies, I have to admit that I haven’t been on this site much lately, and was pleasantly surprised with all the posts, Blanca and Julie, your journals are looking A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. I can’t wait to have a good look through them!

elizabeth says it’s the year of the butterfly. a year of unfurling and becoming something beautiful.

these are my first try at monoprints and i had to include it in the soujournal journal…i used a rainbow of pastels and traced around a few of the butterflies. i think i’ll get braver on the monoprint thing.

on a good note, tho’ this is still a page from my original journal that i sent to polly, my next journal, from blanca has arrived and is patiently waiting for me to dig in.

living in denmark for over a decade now, i sometimes despair that i don’t see much of the old viking spirit left. so i wrote…

“sometimes i look around me and wonder where the old viking spirit went…it seems so remote from the insular little inward-looking, outward-fearing denmark i see before me.

i wish there was a call or a sound that would awaken it once again – the bravery, the adventure, the know-how, the exploring spirit.

then, there are time when the wind is just right and you can hear the echoes of those heroic times and you get the urge to take off and EXPLORE.”

the photos are ones i took of ships at the viking ship museum in roskilde.

closing in on the last of my pages (well, sorta). we’ve had so much snow this winter, much more than usual and it’s stayed around, rather than melting, or being melted by rain as in more “normal” years.

this has been both good and bad. good because it’s not been so dreary, grey and dark, but bad because we’re really, really, really ready for spring. i need to see green again.

and even more, i need some sunshine, so i made a page where i said i was dreaming of summer.

i used very few words on this page and let the pretty papers and the art aspect of art journaling take center stage. pretty papers from sassafras lass and basic grey (in case anyone wonders). fabulous japanese washi tape (i love that stuff) and a photo of my yellow chucks from last summer, held down with woodgrain contact paper.

I agree.

In spirit of writing is the new praying and painting is just another way of keeping a diary, I have been art journaling away for the past week. Now that my journal has left the building and is sailing towards New Zealand (oh I wish that was me!) it’s my turn to muse over the process…

The beginnings are always hard, especially when it comes to very new projects. It took me a long time to come up with a good first page… in the end I went for spontaneous creation: I picked up my crayons and pieces of pretty paper and started to draw, glue, stick together, hoping that I would have an epiphany of sorts as a result. I did, for better or for worse.

After the first page was finished new thoughts and images started to circle my head, float in and out, appear before my eyes in the most unexpected moments. All because I was spending more and more time thinking about the journal and process, it was starting to get addictive.

In those first chapters of art journaling I went for themes that are important parts of my life. I was setting the scene for myself and for hopefully for others to add to it.

This is what I wanted to say for now. I’m now looking forward to the next step. While creating those first four chapters I have definitely discovered that I can express myself in ways other than just using only words. I want to take this thought further.

Polly

in the spirit of the this girl… posts that i’ve done on my own blog, i did a this girl.. page in the journal. it’s a way for me to assess where i’m at at a given moment. since it’s something that feels like it’s forever-changing.

this one came out a bit more uncertain than they usually do, which was interesting and helped me to see where i’m at.

it’s very liberating to write in the 3rd person, i highly recommend it.

With the idea that others will take our journal and make it theirs, I have left some of the pages I’ve done incomplete. For a couple of them, I’ve created backgrounds and added prompts, ideas on what the pages could include… for others to interpret as they wish… This is one example:

I’m really looking forward to seeing what people do with those!

My first page is also a work in progress. I’ve added certain elements that encapsulate what I think the soujournal project is. I’d like others who get the journal after me to add something to the page, something that reflects what Soujournal means to them.

I’m sure people would come up with very different ideas and inspiration for the project, so I’m curious to see what this page looks like at the end of the project…