If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, all the posts can be found here.  Please read this post first.  There is a flickr group for sharing right 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 and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post.  Thanks!

Today we have a guest post from Cathie Reed.  Watch as she uses a collection of simple (and some of my favorite) supplies to create a super cool art journal page.

I’m so excited to be a part of Julie’s Art Journal Every Day series.  I have been a fan of Julie’s since the first time I heard her on the Paperclipping Roundtable talking about art journaling. I had never heard of art journaling before but that show was a game changer for me.  Before the episode was over I was reading Julie’s blog and it wasn’t too long after that I bought my first art journal.   Two years later, I’m taking my art journal to crops and sharing the fun with my scrappy friends. 

When Julie asked me to share how I made this page, I did a little happy dance and said, “Heck, yeah!” 

I love the freedom of art journaling - trying new products and new techniques.  Who cares if you make a mess or ruin a page, right? It’s art journaling!  So, I usually start a page with a “let’s see what happens” approach. For this page, I wanted to experiment with watercolor.  I bought a cheap pack of watercolors and dug out my old (unused) Stampin’ UP Watercolor Crayons. 

I started by drawing circles with the watercolor crayons. No reason. I just love circles. 

Then I blended the circles with my watercolor paints instead of just water. This is really fun and I highly recommend it because it makes the colors so intense. 

I let the circles dry and added some layers of crayon then blended again to intensify the color. Only, I didn’t blend all of the crayon I put down and that’s how I got the cool lines in the big circle. 

Then I added a blue wash to the background. No reason, I love blue. This time I used water to blend the crayon.

And that’s how this page sat in my journal.  

I was quite happy with how it had turned out and I liked to look at it - just enjoy it.  Until the day I had the idea to make a page about the funny nicknames I have for my kids.   I like to call them “turkey leg” and I knew my watercolor page with the colorful circles was the right background for this fun little story.  

I started with the title. I used my pencil to write out the words “english language” and “funny thing.” It took a few tries to get it the way I wanted so I kept an eraser handy.

Then I traced over the letters with my Pigma Micron (0.8) and erased the pencil lines.

I learned the lettering technique in Lori Vliegen’s Class, Letter Lab.  It’s a great class with lots of tips and techniques.

Then I ripped the page from my journal and put it in my vintage 1930’s Underwood Typewriter. Isn’t he a beauty? (Sorry about the poor lighting.  He lives in the basement.) 

I wanted to contrast my handwriting and I was curious to see what the typewriter would look like. I didn’t have a plan so I just moved the page around and typed whatever popped into my mind. 

Here’s a close up.

And that’s how it all came together. It’s really a simple page that was basically the result of some playtime in my art journal. I love it when that happens. Don’t you?

Thank you, Julie, for inviting me to guest post today and thanks to all her readers and contributors for sharing their work and inspiring me every week. 

Here's the linky list for this week: