Challenge - Week 08

Another week, and another super easy, but totally awesome challenge/exercise. This week I would like you to make your own journal fodder and use it in your journal.
This weeks member download was a pack of doodle flowers. That is kinda what we will be doing today, except these will be a lot easier to make. I promise they will take you less than 5 minutes.

Grab a piece of paper. You can use anything you like. Sometimes I use watercolor paper or heavy duty card stock. But you can also use scrapbook paper or just regular printer paper. It really depends on what medium you plan to use on the paper to color them.
In the below sample I used various makers, watercolor pencils and crayons. Just really a mix of making tools that I had on hand. For those flowers I just used regular printer paper.

Now find yourself a good black maker. Again, the type, depends on what you plan on using to color the flowers afterwards. I did use some watercolor products on my flowers, but since I did not use a whole lot of water I didnt worry too much about the black maker smearing. I used a Sharpie poster-paint marker (water based).

Use your chosen marker to draw doodle flowers all over your page. Dont worry about details too much as you will be painting over it and your probably wont even see the black maker on your finished page.

Cut out the flowers. Just use a scissor and dont worry about being perfect.

You should now have a handful of various sizes and types of doodle flowers.

They are now ready to glue on to your art journal page. I would use a liquid glue, like Mod Podge, then use a plastic card to scrape over to make sure you dont have any bubbles. Let dry completely.

It is now time to add color to your flowers. Use anything you like. Paints, makers, ink, crayons, etc. Anything you like.

This is my finished page. I used all sorts of makers, crayons, paints, etc. Mostly I used Elmer's paint pens and glaze pens from Sakura. Just use your imagination and have some fun. And remember if you don't like your result, then just paint over it again. 

My page above was inspired by Traci Bautista's work, but the idea of using doodle flowers as fodder goes back to the good ol' scrapbooking days. You can use the flowers for all sorts of things in your journals. Clusters, edges, scattered elements. You can paint/color them before or after you glue them onto your page. The possibilities are endless. It is just a nice cheap way of getting some extra fodder on your page without spending money on finished elements, or printing.

REMEMBER: Art Journaling is not about the beginning or the end. It is all about the process.

Have Fun!

And if you do feel up to it, please share pages at our Flickr gallery HERE