This week, let’s continue to embrace the outpouring of creativity in our journals. Choose a bird idiom, such as ‘birds of a feather stick together’ or ‘bird-brain’, and use it as a starting point or prompt in your journal. Lay down color, perhaps some tape, paste on images, add some journaling with a favorite pen, embellish with glitter or feathers or whatever strikes your fancy. Have fun with this!!

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Grab your journal and unleash that inner artist. Work fast and free, don’t stop to judge or second guess yourself. Just create! And if you’d like to share with us, post on your blog, then leave your link* in the comments section of this post so we can go check it out.

* To ensure it is easy for us to find your artwork, please provide a link to a static page that will always show your submission, and not your website’s main page.

An art journal can be a very intimate expression of one’s self. This week, I encourage you to make that journal truly yours. Befriend it. Brand it. Most importantly, USE it. (You can even abuse it, art journals are very, very forgiving.)

And don’t forget to go check out Suzi Blu and her latest How to Keep an Art Journal video. I love her idea of making a pocket — perfect for hiding secret poems… or photos of secret crushes… or whatever other little intimate bits you have up your sleeve. By the way, aren’t you all just loving Suzi Blu?! I am so happy to see her name popping up everywhere — she is really creating a wave of art journaling inspiration out there. We had a lot of artists say that they have never kept an art journal, but that they would like to someday. How about letting these videos inspire you and making that someday today?

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Watch the Suzi Blu videos below, then get cracking in that art journal. Whether you are new to art journaling, or even if you are a seasoned art journalist, find inspiration in burying excuses or fears or other negativity beneath layers and layers of paints and papers. Bury that bad stuff once and for all! Then write a new affirmation or message to yourself. Add some positive imagery. Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Start anew.

School Daze

It’s that time of year again… back to school. Devote a page in your journal to thoughts about school. Reminisce over your own school memories… or explore your feelings about your child’s experiences in school… make a statement about the school curriculum or the merits of education… or illustrate lessons from the school of life.

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Grab your journal and unleash that inner artist. Work fast and free, don’t stop to judge or second guess yourself. Just create! And if you’d like to share with us, post on your blog, then leave your link* in the comments section of this post so we can go check it out.

* To ensure it is easy for us to find your artwork, please provide a link to a static page that will always show your submission, and not your website’s main page.