Art Journaling Therapy With Gel Press®

For our blog hop today we are focusing on health and wellbeing. Make sure to check out all of the talented designers to see how they interpret our theme this month. You will find the links at the end of my post.

Health and Wellness Art Journal Page

Art journaling is my way of figuring things out in more ways than one.  It's a place where I play with a new product or technique. But it's also a way of purging or recording thoughts, quotes, ideas and feelings in a visual and creative way. There is something very therapeutic about writing my thoughts and feelings onto a blank page then covering them up with paint, stamps and stencils. Here is an art journal page that I made to remind myself to keep mind, body and spirit in balance for my own health and wellbeing.  For this page, I used the large format, 12" x 14" Gel Press Plate.

Balance Art Journal Page

See my process creating this page in the snapguide below.

Check out How to Create an Art Journal Page With Gel Press® by Kathy Adams on Snapguide.

Balance Art Journal Page

Spiral Bound Gel Press® Journal

An easy way to make a quick journal is to use Gel Press® prints and bind them using a Bind-It-All spiral binding machine. If you don't have one, office supply stores like Office Depot have inexpensive spiral binding services. Check out my video showing how I made the covers using Gel Press® Plates.



Sometimes just making backgrounds in my art journal is therapy! I loved making these pages using some of my favorite StencilGirl Stencils. Each one started out as a gel print.

The idea behind an art journal is not to make a masterpiece but to play, work out ideas or use a new product. Here are a few more pages in this art journal doing just that.

Art Journal Page Using Face Stamp

An Exercise in Letting Go of Perfection

Junque Journals

My favorite journals are the ones I learned to make while taking Julie Balzer's "Make Your Own Junque Journal Class".  They have a hand-sewn binding so there is no gap between pages like on a spiral bound journal.  I made five junque journals, most using gel prints and patterned paper.  The covers are created using canvas panels, Gel Press® prints, stencils and stamps.

Here are some of my favorite Junque Journal pages.

Collage Art Journal Page 

Collage Art Journal Page

Thank you for visiting my (long) blog post today! Here are the links to the other designers blogs:

Ann

 Cindi

Cynthia

Elena

                               Kathy <------you are here

Keri

Kitti

Jen

Sandee

Teresa

Gel Press

Art Journaling Related Links:
StencilGirl Stencils
Julie Balzer's Make Your Own Junque Journal Class
Inspiration Wednesday
How To Make An Inspiration Journal
Wilna Furstenberg's Art Journaling Videos

Mixed Up Manic Monday

Hi creative friends! I got all caught up with Inspiration
Wednesday so I thought I would share my take on the last few weeks.  I'll start with my favorite, the most recent.

There is so much I love about this page: the color combo of cobalt teal and quinacridone nickel azo gold, mixing in the white with my finger, the peeks of book text and black numbers from the layers, and the addition of pencil around the circles and the raised text.

April 27

I also love when something doesn't work but I find a way to make it even better!  In this case, I didn't have the rub-on sticky words but had the foil.  So I tried to use sticky embossing powder and a word stamp but I couldn't read the word.  I found that the foil stuck to the painted surface because it was still a bit sticky so I used the end of my paintbrush and scribbled some words and lines through the gold foil and it stayed put!

April 27

April 13  

This is the week when Donna used the Poppy napkins.  Obviously, I didn't have any flowery napkins, but I did have lots of gel plated deli paper. I picked a black and white geometric pattern and used Seth Apter stencils for the words and outlined them with black pencil.  Love the lines at the bottom. 

March 30

I used another gel print on this page.  I actually had some of that bleeding tissue and had not used it yet, so that was fun!  My favorite thing is the animal on the dictionary page I used.  It's called a Gnu-a large African antelope. :)

March 30

When I saw the blue dripping, I thought about water and how much I love the ocean.  I had some of those sticky rub-ons in ocean shapes but no words so I went with that and hand wrote the quote.

  

March 16

I call this one the "Hot Mess" page and with any luck, Donna will have us redo one like last year.  I do like the quote, "Time flies. It's up to you to be the navigator." 

March 02

Thanks for visiting my blog today.  I love comments so don't be shy!

Kathy

Color Blocking with Gel Press

Hi friends!  Today I have a step by step tutorial on the Gel Press blog where I will show how to create a color block background using three of the small Gel Presses. I made this art journal using lots of gel prints and two pieces of cardboard and spiral bound them using my Zutter Bind-It-All.  (I bought that thing a long time ago and never used it till now.  I love it and want to spiral bind everything!)

Front Cover

Back Cover

I put together a short video on how I made the journal covers.

Here are some of the gel prints inside of the journal.  They are unaltered aside from being trimmed to make the journal.  

Thank you for visiting my blog today!