Dear Friends,

Today, six weeks or so before Christmas, there are many craft and art sales in town.  There are also several events online that I don’t want to miss.  I’m sure it’s busy wherever you are, too.

So let’s make it easy and relaxing today.  Put on some of your favorite music, and paint a few backgrounds today so that they’re ready to house your written journalling.

I use either watercolors or cheap craft paint on journal pages.  Golden Fluid Acrylics are WONDERFUL  —– FOR CANVAS!  But I find that they are too sticky for journal pages that are closed most of the time, with page against page.  Get the paint that’s a dollar or two a bottle.  I put the paint on with either a wide brush or using an old plastic gift card.  Play around with brush or card strokes —- you’ll get various effects.  If using acrylics, squirt out a couple of drops of two or three colors and see how they swirl together.

The effect above is the result of a light pink/lavender background.  I let it dry, then put down a stencil of the circles and painted over it with the darker violet.  I also did a little doodle in the middle.

However you do your backgrounds, either leave a clear space for writing, or keep the background muted enough so that you can see your writing over the background.  I particularly like to do that; when I write in black ink on the above page, you won’t immediately see the individual words.  It will be somewhat hard to read.  But I like that, because it encourages me to let friends page through my books knowing that they won’t be able to read too many of my private thoughts unless they really get to studying the book.  It doesn’t guarantee privacy, but invites it.

Have fun and relax with this.  No words today.

With love,

Cat

This is day 22 of a series of daily prompts for written, visual, or art journalling, or just for pondering.  For more background information, see the Intro page https://catcharissage.com/2014/10/29/announcing-sixty-days-of-visual-journalling-prompts/, or this post on visual journalling: https://catcharissage.com/2014/07/12/talking-about-journals/.