Art Journal Catalysts

2. Grow

Journaling in monochrome

Journaling in monochrome

Colour Hello all, it's EmK again, and I'm here to talk to you about using color! I know that you’re probably not surprised that I'm talking to you about color this season, but...

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Colour symbolism around the world

Colour symbolism around the world

Colour Hey, Messians! Misty here to talk about the cultural connotations and the symbolism of color from around the world.My interest in how colors are used in other cultures...

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Masking and resist techniques

Masking and resist techniques

Contrast Hey Y’all, Katie here! For today's tutorial I wanted to share a few different techniques for doing watercolor resists and masking with with a variety of supplies....

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How to use scale to create contrast

How to use scale to create contrast

Contrast Hi, friends! It's Misty here to talk a bit about using size to create contrast and interest in your journals. I've got a short video to go over a few basics. I'll be...

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Drawing with pen and ink

Drawing with pen and ink

Art 101 Hi, lovely Messians.  It's Elizabeth here.  I hope to serve as your personal creative cheerleader this season and throughout the year, chiming in with a "Just give it a...

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Cataloguing and swatching your pens

Cataloguing and swatching your pens

Art 101 Hey Messians! EmK here for my first post, and I could not be more excited to be sharing these videos with you! You may have realized that this season is special! The...

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Creating pages inspired by cover art

Creating pages inspired by cover art

Hello messy dearest. I have a really fun challenge for you today. This one hits me right in the (good) feels and I hope you’ll love it too.We’re gonna go way back and pick a favorite...

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Making and Using Gelli Print Backgrounds

Making and Using Gelli Print Backgrounds

Hey there Messians,  Katie here with my first post as a part of the Get Messy Creative Team! I am super excited to be here and be able to share a peek into my art journaling with you....

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How to staple large zines

How to staple large zines

This is one of those ‘a-HA’ moments. I could never figure out how to staple together pieces of paper that were too big for my stapler to reach. I saw this on the net somewhere a few...

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Messy Recipes

Messy Recipes

Sometimes, your creativity needs a catalyst, and Messy Recipes includes a bunch of catalysts for creating an endless amount of art journal pages. Get Messy Fairy Artmother Caylee Grey has designed 12 recipes that include a list of “ingredients” (or supplies), a method with step-by-step directions, and pictures for guidance and inspiration. Guests artists have shared their favourite recipes too. Following the recipes exactly or using them as a guide, you can create endless variations. Perfect for beginners and experienced artists alike, Messy Recipes provides the catalysts for creativity that you can return to again and again.

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Lettering

Lettering

Belonging#gmseasonofbelongingTurn your monoprinted pages into lettering with Mou's technique.Transcript (this transcript is automatically generated and is sure to contain...

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Lesson 11 – Creating Independently

Lesson 11 – Creating Independently

For our final lesson, we will be creating freely! Take all that you have learned in this course and put your favourite techniques into one page. Be inspired by the pages I am sharing in this lesson as well as your own discoveries along the way. We all are drawn to different things so take stock of what you have been more drawn to throughout the course and think of how you can combine your favourite parts into one (or more!) art journal pages.

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Lesson 7 – Mixing Ink Colours

Lesson 7 – Mixing Ink Colours

Using what we have learned from our first two ink lessons, we will now start to mix our own colours. Most ink sets are quite basic which gives us lots of blending and mixing possibilities. You can blend either directly on your page or on a palette. Depending on how much pigment (ink) and how much water you mix, your colours can differ immensely. Mixing ink colours is different to paint, as you don’t have the option of adding any white. I like to think of water as the white when mixing with ink.

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Lesson 5 – Ink + Water

Lesson 5 – Ink + Water

In our first ink dedicated lesson, we are simply mixing it with water. Super simple, but really cool and a perfect example of stretching your supplies. When you begin altering your materials, it gives you artist status for sure!

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Lesson 1 – Acrylic Gel Medium Transfers

Lesson 1 – Acrylic Gel Medium Transfers

In this lesson I will go over the basic steps you’ll take to create an image transfer. These will be the exact same steps you’ll do for every single acrylic medium image transfer you’ll ever make. Once you’ve got this technique down, you’ll be able to incorporate it into your spreads with other mediums like paints, inks, and various papers.

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Lesson 4 – Colouring In

Lesson 4 – Colouring In

For this lesson, we really are going back to kindergarten. Colouring in is one of life’s simplest joys. It is remarkable for calming your nerves as well as creating bold and fun pages.

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Lesson 5 – Real Life Pieces

Lesson 5 – Real Life Pieces

Incorporating real life pieces into our journal pages – the things that accumulate in your life on their own accord; little mementos that come from events you attend, people you meet or places you visit.

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Lesson 5 – Simple Shapes

Lesson 5 – Simple Shapes

Often we see shapes as separate from the idea of mark making, but shapes are comprised of marks to create them. We use marks to build the shapes we want to see. Shapes can be used to portray all kinds of expression and emotion to a page.

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How to Start Art Journaling

How to Start Art Journaling

What’s the secret to art journaling? Okay, here it is: it’s the starting, the making, and the keeping on making. In this free class, Fairy Artmother and Get Messy founder, Caylee Grey, archeologist and founder of Art Witch Academy, Vanessa Oliver-Llyod, and art therapist and mentor at Mindful Art Studio, Amy Maricle share their perspective on the starting and making part of art journaling. First, they share a peek inside their art journals to answer the question: what in the Frida Kahlo is art journaling? and gush over their favorite supplies. Then, they show you how art journal recipes and prompts can take the overthinking and overwhelm out of starting as they each tackle the same recipe and share their differing results. Finally, learn tips for translating inspiration into action and how to hold yourself accountable by making and connecting with art friends. If you are ready to kickstart your creative practice, then dive in with this class.

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Liven Up Your Creative Palette!

Liven Up Your Creative Palette!

Seasons In this video, I explain three simple principles of color to liven up your creative palettes: color value, temperature and intensity. Use these tips to make your...

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Acrylic Painting Techniques Tutorial

Acrylic Painting Techniques Tutorial

Seasons In this video, I share three fun acrylic painting techniques to create painted patterns in your journal. We’ll walk through dry brush stripes, rose florals, and an ombre...

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Scrap Collage

Scrap Collage

All many of us need to do to create art journal pages is sweep up our art spaces and put those tiny discarded papers to serious work. In this class, instructor Zinia Redo starts simple and progresses through intermediate to advanced techniques that will help you use tiny pieces of leftover papers (or purposefully selected beauties!) for intricate and beautiful backgrounds. All you need for this class is scissors, your scrap paper stash, and glue to get your fingers snipping, arranging, and glueing. You can use this class to create art journal backgrounds, base pages, scrapbook pages, collages, mosaics, summer crafts with the kids, frame-worthy art, and more. If you follow all of the class techniques, you will have 92 art journal base pages ready and waiting for when inspiration strikes.

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Create 5 easy grunge backgrounds in your art journal

Create 5 easy grunge backgrounds in your art journal

In this post I’ll be sharing 5 easy ways to create grungy, gritty and textured backgrounds in your art journals. A lot of my own art journal pages start out with these techniques, because I love that raw, messy texture they can create. These backgrounds techniques can...

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9 ways to add text to your art journal

9 ways to add text to your art journal

For many of us, images come most easily when we’re art journaling, and for others working with text feels more natural. Being a wordy, languagey, writer-type, I am definitely one of the latter. That being the case, I want to show you some of the different techniques I...

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2.3 Riet Poch – Depth in Backgrounds

2.3 Riet Poch – Depth in Backgrounds

In a minimalistic page you can’t have a busy background, a lot of writing and a lot of other elements. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to use more than one color or element, but before you start decide what your focus will be. The focus in this lesson will be on the background. With simple techniques we’ll create detailed bases for our message.

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How to paint an acrylic greenhouse

How to paint an acrylic greenhouse

Connections We're in awe of Julie and her magical art. Obviously her hand-painted floral necklaces speak directly to Caylee's soul. As does her new podcast about her studio...

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Painting With Tissue Paper

Painting With Tissue Paper

Colour Hi!! Sarah here and I’m honored and super excited to share this tutorial with you. I love using tissue paper in my art journals. It’s great for layering and did you...

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Paper marbling with Ink

Paper marbling with Ink

Colour Hi guys! It's Riet here and I'm so excited to show you a very easy technique to marble paper! I love marbling so much that I always look for easy ways to achieve it! Until...

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How to weave with paper

How to weave with paper

Contrast Hello lovelies! It's Ashley here, and I'm so excited to share a new technique for you to try in your art journals. When I was a child I loved all sorts of paper...

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A comprehensive introduction to collage

A comprehensive introduction to collage

Art 101 Hello beautiful Messians, it's Ashley here! Today I am sharing the basics of collage, including a few tips and tricks to try in your art journal. I enjoy collage because...

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A comprehensive guide to acrylics

A comprehensive guide to acrylics

Art 101 There are a variety of styles, brands, and price points for acrylic paints. If you've never ventured into this medium before, welcome! If your experience has...

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Using Stencils

Using Stencils

Hello Get Messians, it's Karen here. I'm going to talk to you a little bit today about how I use stencils in my art journals and other projects. I think that stencils can often be...

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Art Journals from Found Materials

Art Journals from Found Materials

One of the best aspects of art journaling is that there are literally no rules. None at all. This applies even to your journals. Let me back up. I know most of us all started art...

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Painting Water Colour Portraits

Painting Water Colour Portraits

Hi Everyone, it's Tanyalee back with another tutorial for the Season of Music. This season I decided to show you all how I make water colour portraits. They aren't your standard...

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How to Paint a Watercolor Galaxy

How to Paint a Watercolor Galaxy

Hey everyone, Katie here today with the long awaited galaxy tutorial! You may or may not know, but I'm basically obsessed with space related things, so I often paint moons of galaxies in...

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Six fun watercolour techniques

Six fun watercolour techniques

Hey friends, it is Katie from the Creative Team here again! Watercolors are my favorite medium at the moment. I discovered them early last year and just fell in love with how they flow...

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A guide to the transfer technique

A guide to the transfer technique

Hey Get Messians 🙂 It’s Kathleen here and today I want to share a technique with you that you can use to incorporate photos or magazine clippings into your art journals. Here are two...

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Monoprinting

Monoprinting

Belonging#gmseasonofbelongingIn this workshop, Mou walks you through the supplies she uses for monoprinting, and guides you through her process for creating a monoprinted...

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How to make a paper bag junk journal

How to make a paper bag junk journal

Home Char DeRouin Char is an artist, designer and maker whose work is abstract, intuitive and organic in style, with a no-rules approach. She is influenced by experiences and...

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Lesson 1 – Pamphlet Stitch

Lesson 1 – Pamphlet Stitch

We are going to start with a simple, but versatile stitch that will enable you to quickly start creating your own beautiful, handmade art journals.

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Lesson 2 – Long Stitch

Lesson 2 – Long Stitch

The long stitch is a beautiful yet simple way to bind your signatures into a cover. You will be attaching the paper to the spine of your book. The width of the spine and its strength will determine how many signatures you can add into your book.

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Lesson 4 – French Link Stitch

Lesson 4 – French Link Stitch

This stitch is very decorative one and is at the top of our list for difficulty. Just like the Coptic stitch, it allows your journals to lie very flat. Because the open spine is so pretty to look at, I tend to bind thicker journals with this stitch.

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Loving Mama

Loving Mama

When you have kids, you can become so absorbed in the daily work of caring for them that you become disconnected from your personal stories. In existing for others, you can lose yourself. This class is designed to help you take the stories of your mother-self, weave them into the self that existed before you became a mother, and move forward with both of them intertwined. You’ll record the process in a creative journal, and when it’s done, it will be a beautiful love letter to yourself that honours all the parts of who you are and tells the story of how you came to be the amazing woman you are right now. This class comes with the Camellia digital kit, extra journal cards, and a printable workbook to get you creating as quickly and easily as possible.

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Lesson 3c – Collage

Lesson 3c – Collage

Collage is the best way to use those prints and backgrounds, and any other piece of paper or ephemera that you have in your stash.

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Lesson 2 – Facial Features

Lesson 2 – Facial Features

Hey everyone, Welcome to lesson 2! In this lesson I will be showing y’all how I sketch different facial features, such as eyes, mouths, etc. The important features that will make up your characters!

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Lesson 5 – Sketching a Face, Profile View

Lesson 5 – Sketching a Face, Profile View

Okay, in this lesson I am going to teach y’all how to sketch a face from a profile / side view. I used to be pretty intimidated by drawing a profile and every time I did it it would look wayyy weird. Like my girls would have a big forehead, or tiny nose, etc. How did I get better? Practice. I was determined I wanted to learn how to draw a girl in profile, so I started sketching girls in profile… a LOT.

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Lesson 3 – Sketching Hair

Lesson 3 – Sketching Hair

In this lesson I’m going to show you how to draw a variety of different hairstyles you can use on your faces! In the video I show some different ways to draw both straight and curly hair, and how to use the lesson printable.

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Lesson 6 – Watercolouring a Face

Lesson 6 – Watercolouring a Face

It’s time for my absolute favorite lesson of this class! I really enjoy coloring in my sketched faces and I think it’s what really brings these drawings to life. So, in this lesson I’m spilling my watercolor secrets and I’m going to show you how I do it.

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Lesson 4 – Sketching a Face, Front View

Lesson 4 – Sketching a Face, Front View

Guess what? In this lesson I’ll be showing you how to sketch a face from start to finish! You can sketch faces at many different angles, but the angle I’ve always found easiest was just a front view, which means the girl is facing directly towards you.

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Lesson 2 – To Gesso or Not to Gesso

Lesson 2 – To Gesso or Not to Gesso

Gesso: A white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these. It is used in artwork as a preparation for any number of substrates such as wood panels, canvas and sculpture as a base for paint and other materials that are applied over it.

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Lesson 3 – Watercolor Moon

Lesson 3 – Watercolor Moon

What goes well with galaxies? The moon! I love anything that has the moon on it, If I see a collage with the moon, I will instantly love it, or if I see any sort of moon accessory- it’s mine!

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Lesson 4 – Watercolor Milky Way

Lesson 4 – Watercolor Milky Way

Yay, welcome to lesson four! In this lesson I am showing you how to paint your very own Milky Way galaxy with watercolors! My process for this is pretty much the same as lesson 1, the abstract galaxy, however I work off of a reference photo so that it ends up looking like the Milky Way!

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Lesson 2 – Abstract Galaxy

Lesson 2 – Abstract Galaxy

In this lesson I am going to show you how to paint the easiest of watercolor galaxies! We won’t be using reference photos or anything, we’ll just be splashing watercolors around and experimenting to create a gorgeous, abstract starry scene.

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Lesson 5 – Acrylic Galaxy

Lesson 5 – Acrylic Galaxy

We’ve already made it to lesson 5 and in this lesson I am going to show you how I paint a galaxy using acrylic paint! This is a totally different medium than watercolors, and while watercolors are my personal favorite (I love how the flow and blend!), acrylics paint can make some really cool galaxies and they are often more vibrant and richer colors than watercolor paints

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Lesson 2 – Scribbles

Lesson 2 – Scribbles

Ah, scribbles, the most instinctive of all the marks to make! I use scribbling heavily in my work because to me it’s an open ended expression and can easily be modified to reflect my emotions. You can use scribbles in so many ways to build backgrounds, create color blocks and add more expressive details.

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