Visual Journaling

di mcdonald
Australia
email: di@dyzee.com
 

© di mcdonald 2007
 
 
 

                                    dyzee.com

Click here for a free page of fun words for your visual journal

What is Visual Journaling?
It is a way to include pictures into your journaling to make it come alive!

This is Suzi Blu. 
I love her videos on making her Journals so I will bring them all 
to this website so you can enjoy them and learn from them like I do.
I am a visual person so this way of learning is so easy for me.
Enjoy!!

 

13 easy steps to visual journaling
1: Most of the time I buy cheap unlined journals, with spirals and black front pages. I leave the covers till last, but there are no rules here and you can do what you like. This  article is to give you ideas and get you started  on one of the most enjoyable creative pursuits I know:-) If you are more inclined you can make your own journal or buy a handmade one. In the past I have found that I dont do a HUGE amount of writing in each page. I tend to use the pictures to convey to me what I am thinking about at the time and just make a statement of some type with writing or blocks of text.

2: The first thing I do is sit at a desk and colour about 10 pages. If you have the backgrounds already coloured it seems a lot easier to get going. There is something sort of scarey about  plain white pages. I adore the look that watercolours give, so mostly I use them for the backgrounds of the pages. Sometimes I use acrylic paints.I like to pre scribble on the pages with crayons or oil pastels which acts as a sort of a resist under the paint.

3: I then wet the whole page then swish watercolour paints all over. I tend to stop with two colours, maybe add more water and tip the pages so the paint runs together. I am always in a hurry so the heat gun is a wonderous tool to get the papers dried quickly. I use  silicone paper between the pages until everything is really dry. 

4: It really is up to you what you use and how you decorate the background.If you draw  then you will know just how much of the background you want to colour. Some people want to do a lot of writing in the journal, then I would suggest that you colour around the top and edges and leave the inside of the page blank or you may find one of those wonderful pens that write over the top of the paint. I think its lovely to find "your own unique style" so you have your own "look".!

5: Remember to try any watercolour crayons, lumiere paints or twinking H2O paints ( I just bought some of these and am not sure I am much of a fan). Acrylics  or oil paints  and pastels, chalks, felt tipped pens, coloured pencils, black or coloured sharpies, Gold pens...................try them all out and see what combinations you love the most:-)

6: Once those background pages are done, you can leave the book until you are ready to decorate a page. When I feel in the mood I go to the book and choose a page that "calls to me", 

7: I dont start at the front page at all..this is about  creativity and intuition and learning to feel those. The one thing I ALWAYS do is Date the page. This gives me some feel for the rhythm of my life as I look through the journal later on. I think its very important. ( continued after the pictures)

Here are some pictures from my own visual journal

8: Now to the collage part! I love to flick through magazines and just pull out the pages or rip out the pictures that "call to me" at the time. Often I will have no idea why I want them, but do it anyway. I use the "Oprah" magazine quite a lot and I was lucky to buy in a second hand bookstore a book of coloured photos that graphic artists use. Some of these are very weird and they are sometimes just perfect for what I want. 

9: Sometimes the picture I choose doesnt convey what I want to say at all but it just "feels right", so I use it anyway. I glue the pictures in the pages and then add the text. One of my favorite ways to do this is to cut out letters from the magazine to make up the words. I try to use different colours for each letter and make sure they are all different sizes. It just adds to the page.

10: The writing that I do in the page usually comes last. If you are a busy mum or you work out of the home, it is a great idea to take your journal with you and during lunch or while waiting to pick up children , or even when travelling, you can get it out and do the writing to finish off the page. 
At one time I was very disciplined and worked on my journal every morning as I was eating breakfast. Made me feel really good but I was always left with a big mess to clean up LOL LOL. 

11: Sometimes I draw on the page as you can see in the above one  with "inspiration" written on the top. I drew some of the face and added bits of faces I got out of a magazine.

12: I use clear smelly acetone based craft glue to do the collage with.............sometimes a glue stick will be perfect and not nearly as messy.

13: The last thing I do is add 3 dimensional elements if I feel like it. I make sure I am happy with the page. Working in my visual journal is very satisfying to me and I hope you will at least "give it a go".