Journaling and Collage: It's Not Just for Artists

Journaling, especially with a collage twist on it can be a very freeing experience. Your book will be a space where you don't have to worry about making spelling errors, self-editing your ideas/thoughts to please others, or making mistakes.

Collage is a art technique where you use various glues, images from magazines, books, photocopied photos, interesting items you find, and various items to create what eventually becomes a piece of art.

Some of the items I've used in my work include playing cards, buttons, flowers, labels, old greeting cards, fortunes from fortune cookies, doubles of photographs, scraps of ribbon, yarn and fabric, and anything I can get my hot little hands on.

As a child, learning different art forms, my mother often told me that there are no mistakes in art, simply a new way to look at things. The reason why I love collage is: if you do something that you are displeased with, you can take another image and just glue it over the one you aren't crazy about. If you have an entire page you don't like, you can simply spread gesso over it, (a thick, white, pasty like substance that is often used on canvas, and maybe purchased at your local craft store),or glue a new, clean page over the one you don't like.

Your journal is specifically for you. Whether or not you choose to share it with others is entirely up to you. You get a chance to flex your creative muscles that you may not have known existed.

You can have "Free" pages where you simply put together whatever comes to mind, and some pages you can have "Theme," where topics are chosen and then further explored in your journals, either written, collaged or both.