The Art Journaler

The Art Journaler is not one person. It is not a certain style or a level of artistic accomplishment. It is a collective us. A messy us. A sparkly us. A secret us. An entity greater than us. It is a belonging. And you belong, if you are seeking to belong to a community of women discovering art and journaling and expressing themselves as artists

My partnership with Mandy Steward {aka @messycanvas} at TheArtJournaler.com officially launched on April 1, 2012 — after jotting our wishes in a crayon-written draft-plan {on newsprint} two months prior. We are delighted to connect the communities we are involved with{in} a creative overthrow of should’s and preconceptions of what art journaling {should} be like; coloring outside the lines and dancing like nobody is watchin’!

You are invited to join in …

Let’s imagine ourselves in a spacious {but cozy} room with walls of windows … paint drips on the floor and long tables of collage ephemera … undaunted laughter, occasional giggles and whispers-in-a-spin from those daring to unfold what they previously only peeked at within. #norules ♥

The Art Journaler Online Community

You are cordially invited to share your pages and creativity on Flickr. Let’s share our discoveries and pass around our proverbial field journals as we capture bits of our risky explorations. We can use our {imperfect} art to remind one another we are exactly where we need to be in our one wild and precious life. We can whisper “me too’s” in underground layers, because we speak each other’s language and we are safe there

My Story

I have journaled since I was a young girl, saving trinkets, notes and cards, and sporadically making handwritten entries in various bound notebooks in order to jot mental notes of important {or just sparkly} events. My earliest “art journals” were doodles, hand-lettered notations, stickers and various collage ephemera accumulated from my daily activities.

These notations of memory were collected on my wall calendar and a small cedar box. In college, I had clear plastic boxes full of what my friend, D’aun, referred to as num-nums: matchbooks, Lifesaver wrappers, bottle caps, stickers, ribbons and a widely-random range of items to commemorate our adventures.

When I married my widower-husband-dad-to-two, I traded fancy-smancy, leather-bound business planners and journals for a very large wall calendar to record the comings and goings of our family. I also used bargain-bin spiral notebooks {conveniently stored on my kitchen counter} to save fingerpaint handprints and construction paper collages, hand-written journal entries and various crayon-scribbles. And more than a few three-ring binders of my children’s school-notes, photographs and memories from field-trip adventures.

My “official” creative planning-journaling days began in 2007 when I was pressing “resume” for my full-time business career. There seemed to be so many considerations and notations … I needed a system to break it down into {more} manageable pieces.

My first right-brain planner was created with collages of Post-it® notes and printer paper. Altered books soon became my “planners” and it has since become less about words and more about an assemblage of torn paper and miscellany while I simply ponder my to-be’s and to-do’s.