First- What is Get Messy Thursday? At the beginning of 2015 I joined an online community called "Get Messy". It is a group of art journalers and creatives. If you're interested you can learn more (and sign up) on the Get Messy blog here. The fun thing about the Get Messy Art Journaling group is that they have "seasons" and every season has different themed prompts.
Over the next 6 weeks I'll be sharing my art journal pages inspired by Get Messy. This season is the "Season of Words" and those of us in the Get Messy community are being inspired by words and journaling in altered books.
I've done plenty of altered book crafts over the years, but can you believe this is my first time turning one into a journal? I'm surprised I hadn't done it already.
I'm using a copy of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (the third book in The Hunger Games series) for my book. This is one of my favorite books and I obviously didn't want to use my copy, so I found one for 99 cents at the thrift store, that way I don't feel quite as bad covering it in paint.
I started by gluing pairs of pages together to make them thicker and ripping out just ad many. That way when I add paint the pages don't buckle as much and there is more room in the book.
Next I went through and gesso'd a good number of my pages, although not all of them. That takes a while, as you have to wait for the gesso on one page spread to dry before moving onto the next.
On some of the pages I used paint or creative mediums instead of gesso, and some I just left blank.
One other thing I did was to add washi tape tabs to the pages with my favorite quotes on them, so that I could easily find them later.
And there we have it! I'm excited to be starting a new journal, so many possibilities! I will probably be doing a few Hunger Games themed pages (how could I resist??) but not all of them will be themed around the book.
Have you ever altered a book before?
Look for another Get Messy post next Thursday!