Fear of Blank Pages and My New Journal

Breaking in a new journal is hard...all those blank pages staring back at you, daring you to do something, and your inner critic saying "don't mess it up! Be brilliant! No smears, nothing sloppy, nothing trite!"

To overcome the dreaded blank journal page, I made my previous journal with colored cardstock, which helped a little. For my latest journal, I went a step further, using some delicious commercial scrapbooking paper and some painted deli paper instead of blank pages.



Randomly painted colorful deli paper was used for the journal pages.
Two thin sheets of painted deli paper were put back to back and glued
together with matte medium to form each page.

Commercial printed paper and painted deli paper covered the
folder cardboard, and signatures of colorful paper were sewn in
to each fold.

For the journal cover, heavy cardboard was covered with my
own fabric, which I designed and was printed on cotton by Spoonflower.

 

Pieces of commercial scrapbook paper was cut to size for
some of the journal pages.

The unfinished journal, with both commercial paper and
painted deli paper.The tied signature pages are visible.

Once the journal was done, I still stared at the pages and thought "oh, this is too pretty to mess up!" But I pressed ahead and worked on the page anyway.

First completed  page of the new journal

I used a beautiful photo of a poppy--one of my favorite flowers--that was torn from a Spring fashion catalogue. It went nicely with the pink painted deli paper background. In my stash, I found a little bottle of Lumiere acrylic paint, so I used it with some stencils to add texture.

Then I added words that popped into my head. I am always thinking about art--designing some new project in my head, or doodling, or scribbling down ideas or taking a photo of something that inspires me, so I wrote those thoughts.

Some of the pink painted deli paper shows through, which is much more interesting than the standard white page.

After the first journal page was done, I was on a roll, so I also finished part of a shared "hands" project. Originally we were going to start painting or drawing on a hand shape, then mail it around and each person would add a little bit...kind of like a chain letter. However, one of the participants decided to make a book, so I took her blank hand shape, and used it like a little journal page, applying stamps, stencils and words randomly to the front and back.

Palm of hand, with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stamp and
Artistcellar stencils

Front of hand, with stamps, stencils, paint and markers.