Art Journal Every Day: Five Ideas to Jazz Up Your Journal

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here.

Today I've got a heap of awesome for you: techniques and ideas and inspiration to get your art journal mojo moving.  I've combed the internet to bring you some ideas that have got me excited to open my art journal.  I hope that they excite you too!

Check out Rachel's 8 simple watercolor techniques on the "Adventures in Making" blog.  Perfect for beautiful backgrounds and collage papers!

How about adding wings?  Check out how cool this looks:

by Carolian

by Alexi 

by Ingrid Dijkers

Personally, I'm very into adding non-traditional pages to my art journal at the moment.

This notebook comes from a kit you can buy from the Curious Doodles Etsy shop. 

The shop is on a break at the moment,  but I think you could make your own little kit.  Go ahead and jazz up your art journal cover with some easy stitching!  If you're working with a hard cover book you could this to one of the inside pages!

I love the look of the tea bags that Becca has incorporated into her collage:

I've heard a number of artists praise tea bags as collage fodder.  I even bought a box of empty tea bags a few years ago in order to try something like this.  Of course, I can't find them now....

I used to be absolutely addicted to cutting out words and images from fashion magazines and making collages.  I love this fresh take on that idea:

I couldn't find the original artist -- I simply found it here on Pinterest -- so if anyone knows, please let me know!

Hope you're feeling ready to sit down and make some art journaling magic!

Thanks for stopping by!