Wrap me up!

There has been much journaling going on this week in the warren.  On Saturday I attended a journaling workshop based on The Artists Way by Julia Cameron.  It was being hosted at a local high school and, for £11.25 for a full day and your dinner, it was an opportunity not to be missed. 

I'm not really sure what I expected from it.  I was hoping that it would help with the writing aspect of my journaling as this is the part I always find the hardest.  The art bit, the painting and decorating pages, sticking sparkly bits on and generally having arty fun is easy and rewarding but when it comes to writing I often get a block.  What do I write about?  What have I got to say?  

Writing we got!  The lady running the course announced that she wanted us to write for 1 hour!  Yes, you heard me right, 1 hour!  My initial thoughts I will not print here but needless to say I did not feel good.  I felt intimidated by  the blank pages in front of me and  the prospect of sitting like a pudding for 1 hour with nothing to write about. 

So, in true teacherly fashion, I wrote the date and title, underlining them to!  It instantly took away the blank page, it was no longer as intimidating.  I then began to write about what had happened that day and then it just flowed.  One thought led to another and another and before I knew it I was writing.

Now, being completley honest, I have never sat down and just written before like I did then.  I never made myself do it.  It was a block, a barrier I had given myself and I chose the easy way out, to paint a pretty background.  As I said in my last post, ecourses like Andrea's and prompts from the Art Journaling magazine have helped me to write and record but, that 1 hour yesterday morning made me realise that I could write!

So, on to the title of my post, 'wrap me up'.  As you may have ascertained I love my art journal.  It is precious to me.  It is me as an artist and my thoughts and feelings and day to day happenings in my life.  It is my creative outlet.  It was sat there on my crafty work table, as beautiful as it is, but I felt it was missing something.  It needed to be kept in a special place, in a special way.  I decided to make it it's own special wrap! 

My beautiful journal and wrap.

I made the wrap from strips of fabric cut into rectangles and sewn together.  Some of the fabric is from old clothing I had, like a gorgeous silk skirt that no longer fitted, there is part of my wedding dress on there and other fabrics I had in my stash.  I then added ribbon and ric rac to cover the seams and used a zig zag stitch to make it look more decorative.  Finally I added a button (one a got from the Textile fair) and some pink ribbon to fasten it.  There was no pattern, it was just an idea and I played around until it looked right. 



Flat wrap

  I enjoyed making it so much I made one for my Mum, who loves her art journaling to, and have decided to make some for the Gingerbread Bunny Folksy shop when it is launched. 

Mum's journal wrap