Art Journal Autograph book

Before our trip a nice a clean Autograph book

We were blessed to be able to go to Walt Disney World. So for 5 months, I was preparing for this week long dream come true!

Part of this planning was an autograph book. I knew that I wanted something that was personal, and creative. While I was watching an Art Journal class on CreativeBug I knew that I could make an art journal for our trip for autographs, it's a perfect fit for Autograph books!

Here are some of my tips, and How I made it work.

First, you need a good sturdy BOOK, The book I picked out was great until the last day, and it seemed to fall apart. So Get a bound book that can take getting altered. I like the mixed media sketchbooks for that purpose.





I love that art journals have no "rules" as it should be. So be free, when I was creating this journal/autograph book I wasn't thinking too much about the other pages I started in the middle and thought about the mood I wanted, I wanted each page to feel fun and bright and light hearted.

With the mood in mind I found stencils and away I went, I thought about color choices for each stencil and I decided that some pages needed to be simple and others had more saturated pigment than others, I wanted variety and texture on the pages so I used some liquid watercolors in a spray bottle which are super fun to play with!!!!

Other stencils I traced and then colored in the design, and also for some I used a blending technique to blend. Really I just wanted the whole book to feel carefree and bright, so I didn't fuss too much over the "art" of it, I spent most of my thoughts on the negitive parts asking questions like: Is there enough room for an autograph? Does the color work? is the color to saturated, You know all those silly questions you would ask if you were desinging something for someone.

For some non stenciled pages, I picked 3-4 watercolors and used brush strokes to make the page burst with colors, or used a light wash to bring out desing elements.
Not all the pages are showne in this post, I had 22 pages to create on, the perfect amount

Once the pages were painted on, I then had a pile of what I call "recycle art" Art that you don't want to throw away becuase you learned something from it, or you were messing around on some scratch paper and you really like how it turned out... Yep I used them in the book. I cut the art to size and added it to the pages with washi Tape, making it a flap to the page.  A cherished memory happend from my"recyled art" my daughter and I were getting Repunzell's autograph and she didn't want to sign on the flower that I wanted her to autograph on, she was like it's too nice to sign on top of it, that painting deserves to go in a frame, I assured her that it was just a pracitice one, and that she deserves this spot becuase after all my daughter and I love her! It was a special memory that I will cherish.

I chose washi tape that worked with the over all "feel" to match the washi tape to the book I used color theroy to govern my choice, that's all, nothing too fancy about it. If the color worked then it was good to go on.

Next I chose some journaling tags and stickers. I love going to Tuesday Mornings! While I was there in the winter I picked up a pack of cardstock stickers from Basic Grey (one of my all time favorite paper crafting designers) and knew that the stickers would be fun and bright for my addiction, I mean paper craft hoppy. Since I had like 10 sheets of the same stickers I didn't have to feel so stingy with the stickers and used them as accents to the Art Journal Autograph book! The stickers made the whole book look unified when before it looked like an art journal.

What do you think? have you used an art journal as a autograph book before? While we were at Cinderella's Royal Table Jasmin said to me, YOU GOT TO SELL THESE I have never seen anything like this before! So there you go, maybe I will start a new trend, I mean after all mixed media and art journals are so trendy right now, that it makes sense to turn your art journal into an autograph book right?