Three weeks ago, I started taking Christy’s She had Three Hearts workshop. In the first week, Christy had 29 videos. Most of them showed different products and how they can be used for art journaling. While I had several of the products, there were a few I’d heard of but never tried and I ended up buying a few of them after watching the videos.

I’m a firm believer that talented people can work with whatever they have at hand. You do not need expensive art supplies to create great art. However, I’ve also come to believe that some mediums work better for some people. For example, I don’t like working with acrylic paint most of the time because I am impatient and don’t like to wait for it to dry and it never comes out the way I like. But I love watercolor (on watercolor paper). So I decided that I wanted to experiment some and find my favorite mediums. Christy’s videos not only prompted me to buy some new supplies but they also were the catalyst for me to sit and do some art journaling.

The first thing to do was pick a book. I didn’t want to buy something new and I’m already using the A4 watercolor moleskine for my weeklong pages so I had a few large Sketchbook Moleskines I’d bought earlier this year (for the portrait drawings) and I decided to repurpose one of those.

My goal was to just play so I can find my way of creating art journaling. I also decided my colors are happy colors. I like bright, strong colors on my scrapbooking so I thought I might like the same in art journaling. I slapped a bunch of color on my background using the watersoluble crayons and then I drew some hearts and just went from there. I ended up with this:

The amazing quote stamp is from cat’s life press and the doily one is from My Mind’s Eye. Everything else is just sequin waste and random texture.

I was pretty happy with this page. Didn’t adore it but felt much better than my previous pages. Two days later, I received my Graphtint pencils and wanted to try them out, so the background here is created by those pencils. I then added some handwriting, some lace, flowers, etc and a lot of journaling. I ended up with something like this.

I stared and stared at the page, worked on it for a long time and just did not like how it turned out. I really really disliked my handwriting especially. So, the next day, I covered it up with book paper, recreated some more background, added some more flowers, layers, etc and ended up with this.

which is still not great but i like it so much more. So much.

The next day, my long awaited panpastels arrived and I was in heaven. I had waited so long to get these and I was suddenly so so glad to have them. I love and adore this medium. It’s like it was invented for me. I created this simple page right away. Back to my happy, bright colors.

I used my cricut to cut a bunch of shapes so I could use them as templates and it worked like a charm.

I loved this medium so much that I did two more pages that same night. One of them is now saved for another project but here is the other:

This page also uses the Crafter’s Workshop template I bought. See those bright penpastels? I love them!

And then I used another new medium I adore, the Liquitex Acrylic Ink! to create this page. I had also resisted buying these but I adore them. Even though I don’t usually like acrylic, these are wonderful in that they are very pigmented and very vivid and they dry right away. I love them.

And that’s it for now. More pages coming next week. I haven’t stopped making pages since I received all these products and I am so happy. I love these happy pages. I love creating and I am just enjoying the process for now. Thank you for letting me share.