 calling journaling with movement. I really over the last five or six years have explored a lot of different ways to art journal. I think this might be my favorite. So here I'm working in an old 2017 moleskin, some sort of daily diary thing. I actually found it the goodwill. I'm not worried about covering up the whole entire page. I like the text that's in the background to add texture and things to my page. I've collected different bits and pieces, including this postcard from Stencil Girl, I believe, some papers with old handwriting, some bits and pieces off of a mailing envelope, and some rub-ons from wish.com and some different things. I'm really thinking about creating movement across the page. In this case, we're going horizontally from one side to the other. And doing that with my paint, my marks, my collage, my writing, and creating some sort of dancing movement that goes across the page. And for me has some kind of meaning. So that's what I'm doing. I'm starting by cutting out different pieces from the postcard. I do want to use the whole thing, but I want to cut it up and spread it out across both pages, like I said horizontally. And I want to also make it interesting. So I'm cutting little bits and pieces of it out of the background. I'm playing with the arrangement. It has a quote already on the postcard. I'm going to use that one on the page. I'm good with that. I happen to have a little piece of purple card stock in the stash of random small bits and pieces that were on my desk. That'll work just fine with this piece of paper. So I am just initially dry fitting them, so to speak, and placing them across the page to see where I like the look and placement of everything before I glue anything down. This particular page ends up having very little paint on it. They don't always have any paint on them. When you're working with movement on your page, and you're working with this first suggestion, which is horizontal movement, it is about making things, obviously, that make the eye track across both pages from one side to the other in color and shape and form with writing. It's not about covering up the whole background of the page. It's not about that. I like leaving the blank space or negative space on the page. That's really my thing. I find it more interesting. I'm using gel medium to glue everything down because these pieces of paper and the postcard are fairly thick paper. So if you use, try to use something else, it may not stick. Well, I, you know, I don't always get the placement exactly right when I start gluing it down, but that's okay. So I'm scraping it on with a palette knife, and I am pushing it in pretty well. Hopefully I do have a little trouble with getting that one little corner of the postcard to stick down, but I do eventually. But I get all my pieces stuck down, and then I explore what other randomness is on my desk. I have bins of small bits of paper and things around me. I do have the most recent, the most useful, that little scrap of something I used on a prior page that I didn't have the heart to throw away. That stuff usually lands on my desk. And that's usually the stuff I take a first look at to do these kind of pages. So that's where the purple card stock came from. It was just on my desk. The postcard came from an order I just got in from Stencil Girl from some new stencils that they had that I felt I needed to have in my stash. I know that's crazy town because I make my own stencils, but yeah. Anyway, I also got in speaking of stencils, I got an inventory order form of my stencils from Mike Deacon in the United Kingdom. He does my manufacturing for those for me. And I just got an inventory bundle of stencils in from him. And you'll see in a minute that I use some postage labels and round stickers on the page. Those are from the package I got from Mike, which came in, like I said, it came in that day that I was filming this. I'm not worried about the bits hanging off the end, at least not right now. Sometimes I cut them off after everything is dry. Sometimes I don't. Once you get everything glued down with your gel medium before you do anything else, you really need to let this dry. I'm pretty bad about doing that part. I have no patience. And I am pretty bad about gnarling up my pens because I haven't waited for anything to dry. And then the gel medium gets in the pen tip and it clogs it up and ruins the pen. So do don't do what I do and wait for everything to dry. The paper in this planner is pretty thin, so you do need to be gentle with it, not get it too wet. Use a dryer type glue rather than a wet or one, hence the gel medium. Here are the some of the stickers from Mike's envelope that he sent me. I'm pretty sure these are some of his artwork and probably digital downloads from his Etsy shop, more than likely. I will link his site in the description below. And I'm sorry, not Etsy shop. The shop is on his website. This is the airmail sticker. I do want things to be fairly straight and even because again, I'm trying to think of dancing movement across horizontally across both pages, right? I'm really into creating something that the eye just wants to track across both pages. So here I'm trying to figure out where that needs to be placed. I could tear off the little piece of yellow envelope, but I decide as I'm putting the glue on, I like that little piece of yellow on the mailing on the postage label. And it kind of tracks with the other piece of yellow on the right side in the quote and again has to do with that movement across the page. There's also a little piece of the yellow envelope on the airmail sticker. So it's looking pretty good. Now I'm just making sure everything is pushed down into the gel medium and is not sticking up or anything. And I'm going to sit and let it dry. And then we can continue on to the next step. I'm also scraping off any big globs of glue where they don't need to be, by the way. Don't forget to put the lid back on your glue when you're done before it dries. Here we go. We're back and it's dry. I'm going to take up my favorite art journaling pen, a plain old BIC black ballpoint crystal pen. I am going to make some scribbling lines on the page around some of the elements that I put on the page. I am going to create some interesting movement on the page horizontally. I'm going to also do some very messy random writing. You won't be able to read it. It's just sort of a free writing without really thinking too much about what I'm writing, just writing the feelings I'm having about the page on the page. I have found that using just a plain old BIC ballpoint, it works on almost every dry medium. It doesn't smear. It doesn't bleed through. And it's pretty easy to find. I'm adding some marks in some of the scribbly lines on the page that you may or may not be able to see, but basically I'm just doodling with a black ballpoint pen. I'm going to add some of these Bible Gel High Glider crayons in a blue and an orange. Now these, oh and purple, these are sort of like a oil pastel. So any of these waxy oily crayons really need to be put into a place that you're not going to want to do anything over later or that you're not going to want to write over. They should really be your last step. If you're going to do anything over them, do it carefully, because a lot of things won't stick. These are waxy. They do dry. You can get some things to stick on top of them, which you'll see in a bit, but you can't really write over them again. So if you want to add writing on top, you should do that first before you do the High Gliders. And these are transparent colors, which I love because you can see all the other marks through them. So I am pulling out one of the stencils from my design line of stencils. I'll include the link for it in the description below for the listing for this particular one. I have an entire collection of stencils and stamps in my Etsy shop of my own design, and I have a number of new ones for 2018 that have four small designs on one stencil. And this is one of them. This is four square number three. And as you can see, it has four designs in a square pattern on the stencil is six by six. You can leave it as I have a hole, or you can cut it apart. The paint I'm going to use this with on the page is out of a little gladware container. I had a bunch of random white paints that were almost empty. And so I mixed them all up together, random colors of white paint, some off white, some buff, and I just mixed them together. So now I have my gladware container of white paint. So I'm adding some bright white dots and bright white highlights to just lighten up the darkness of the page a bit. And again, I'm doing it in a way that tracks movement across the page. I am doing them in odd numbers, because I really like the look of having an odd number of things in a composition. So that's just about it. I really love the way this page turning out. I love tracking the movement across the page, working with the idea of creating movement in my composition. I really, really love that. I happen to have these rub-ons from wish.com. They're feather rub-ons. They actually work really easy. I don't have patience for lots of rub-ons, because I have the patience of a nat on a good day. But these are really great. And they just add, again, one more element of interest to the page. I am going to be careful about where I put them, as you can see, and which ones I'm putting, so that, again, they are in a pattern tracking across the page, keeping in mind that movement that I want to create with my page. These come off super, super easily. They're not like some of the ones that you have to rub through to the other side of the book to get it to rub down. These don't do that. They actually come off pretty easy, and they last pretty well. When everything is dry, I do recommend always on your pages giving them a good coat of some kind of beeswax, or I know some people use clear gesso or something, so that your work doesn't stick together. You really don't want things to stick together. There's like one yellow feather that I decide I really want to use, so I love the way that looks. It's so pretty. The page is coming out so well. I have a lot of these sets of feathers, and I grab a second sheet and add some more. You do need to be careful when you're creating pages with movement, and you're not wanting to consciously fill up the whole entire page. Listen to your inner voice that tells you that it's done. We all have that inner voice, that muse that tells you to stop. We just don't always listen, and the key is to listen. Don't be concerned with filling up the whole page and covering up that background paper. One of the reasons I like working in this book is because the background has texture and writing on it. I'm not worried about filling it all up. I'm worried about creating a composition that includes that background to create something interesting that I want to look at and refer back to going forward. That's it. I hope that you all have some fun creating movement in your journal pages. Work on horizontal movement this week. Think about working with movement and working with horizontal movement. Don't worry about filling up the entire page. Just have some fun with it. I do decide at the last minute it needs one more thing. I decide I want some more of that yellow on there. I decide to take out one of my multi-pens and just make some marks, just some little hash marks. Make some marks, do some scribbling, draw some circles, draw some crosses, hash lines, anything. You don't have to be perfect at drawing. It could be stick people. It doesn't matter. Just have fun with the process. Create something you love and enjoy it. That's all you need to do. So journaling with movement. I hope that you enjoy the process and that you create something interesting. I would love to see what you create and if you would like to share you can join my Facebook group, A Life of Art and Self Expression. I will put the link in the description below. There is a link already down there for a site called Linktree. If you click on it you're going to find links to every single place I am on the internet, including Facebook, my Etsy shop, my website, my artwork over at Redbubble. Everything is on there. I do teach in a free online course and group. The videos are here on YouTube but the art, support and community is on Facebook. It's called My Creative Year. You can join that too if you would like. We do daily art and weekly lessons. It's a lot of fun. So anyway journaling with movement. Try it. Enjoy it. Like, share and subscribe if you like this and you would like to see more of this. Let me know. Leave something in the comments below and above all I want you all to go out and I want you to have a great day. I want you to do something nice for yourselves because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys.