Welcome!

Hi everyone! Welcome to my new blog, Mel’s Art Journal. Here I hope to share with you the pages and stages of my various art journals. I came to art journaling through scrapbooking, which was where my love affair with paper started. I’ve been running my scrapping blog for over a year now. Although I will always love documenting my children’s lives through their scrapbooks, after a while I felt like I needed some kind of outlet…something just for ME.

It started when I took Christy Tomlinson’s “She Art” class a couple of years ago. I was totally inspired by her and her beautiful art. When her art journaling class came along I signed right up. Little did I know just how much that class would change my life. I’ve always loved paper, paints, drawing, writing, cutting, pasting…just getting messy. The art journal became my playground and the place I turned to when I needed some time alone with my thoughts, just to be creative without any expectations. Letting go of the notion that every single thing I made had to be spot on perfect was so liberating. In the pages of my journal I’ve been able to express myself freely while exploring many different art mediums and techniques. Here was a place where I could doodle, splatter paint, spray mist, cut out words and faces, and use up all those extra scraps of paper I always seem to have lurking on my desk.

I have found myself in the pages of my books, and would love the opportunity to share my love of this art form with all of you. I’ve wanted to start this blog for so long, but it just never felt like the right time. With 5 children things can get very overwhelming at times. But when I think about how much I love doing this, it doesn’t seem like work. And the blog would never appear on it’s own–I had to make it happen.

So here we are. Let the journey begin!!