The last thing in the world I’m interested in is art journaling. Or so I thought. AJ, for those of you who might not know, is the art of making elaborate journals consisting of, well…art. And whatever pithy thoughts might accompany that art. People go to great lengths with these little books but my feeling was if I put that much work into something I didn’t want to tuck it away somewhere. Because in my mind, journals are private things.

And art is public.

Then I heard about this year long on-line class, Life Book. You can read about it here if you’re interested. Fifty-two weeks of art journaling with lessons by fifteen different mixed media artists. Artists I wouldn’t mind taking a class with. Because I’m ALWAYS open to learning new things.

So I signed up. Along with something like 600  850 other people from around the world. I put my own spin on lesson 1, turned it into an acknowledgement of da muse. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing until I came home tonight and did it.

Totally different than what i usually do. And it was FUN. I enjoyed myself. And God help me, I made one of those silly faces with big eyes. I SWORE I WOULDN’T DO THAT. EVER! But I did. And it was FUN.

art journal page 1

So here’s this week’s Life Book page. Ha–I just notices I left out the ‘e’ in stories. Oh well…

page 1 fold over

It has a fold over that I haven’t done yet. I’ll show you that another day.