Journal your heart out

Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re nearing the end of the second term (aka, I’m tired), but I’ve had a real need to be creative recently. I have learned to take cognizance of  the urge to create because it usually is telling me my brain needs a break from thinking and planning and just needs to ‘space out’ by being imaginative and intuitive with no specific goal or agenda in mind except to create!

I received an unlined journal recently, perfect for filling with whatever I want. I’ve been having fun with it. I wanted to share a couple of things from it for those who are curious about journalling and asking ‘but how do I start?’ I don’t know if what I’ve been doing is called anything… Nothing as fancy as ‘art journalling’…but, it is simply a space I want to fill with colour with whatever I want. Creative process journalling, maybe?

Doesn’t matter, call it what you want, but what it does need is to be filled with whatever takes your creative fancy! I am purposefully not doing much writing in this one as I want to let my right brain dominate!

Here’s one idea. Take a colour you love and make a collage out of it. I used old gardening magazines, decor magazines also work really well. I buy several magazines at a time from charity shops, cheap as chips!!

Instead of writing my own words, I find whimsical poems which make me smile. I write them out and decorate or draw around them. I have a couple of books of poetry by Clive Lawrance which I just love. I found a yellow butterfly online and copied it. (Again, the process was the thing that brought me joy here, don’t judge the ‘artistry’!)

This journal is going to be full of whatever pleases me. Things I like to look at, that I will enjoy looking at again and again. Things that might not turn out quite as aesthetically pleasing as I’d hoped, but nonetheless I get to enjoy the process of creating. Just because.

I highly recommend something of this sort if you’ve been spending a lot of time in your left brain problem solving and thinking. Get simple and uncomplicated, it’s so refreshing!!