Art Journals!

Wow, I have just discovered these. Or re-discovered them, I'm not quite sure which, as the concept seems very familiar.

I have been SO awesomely inspired by the following sites:
Cramzy, by Emmy from the Netherlands. Decorative embellished pieces to feast your eyes on. Lots of photos of exquisite work - thanks so MUCH Emmy, for showing your work to us all and inspiring an old girl so far away!

Fabric Art Journals, a group blog by several artists, one of whom is Arlee. Awesome stuff there.

Follow links from both of these blogs and you will quickly use up all your allotted bandwidth (I did!) and go to sleep very, very happy with your head filled with the sumptuous images of colours and textures and possibilities.

I did a cover for a journal, and the first page. Photos will follow.
Edit 15 Aug: Photos added:
Whole Cover:

Front Cover (left) Back Cover(right)

...Can hardly bear to be at work while it lies at home on my desk, BEGGING to be worked on! - and by evening I am just too tired. Ah, weekend, where are you??

More pics: First page:

Strictly speaking, I suppose this is actually an altered book, since I used an existing book and I am just covering the pages and using the spine and structure of the book. But who's speaking strictly?? I WILL move onto making the book out of the actual pages I make, but this was an quick way to get started. I also want to do mixed media, to use my many lovely papers, so it helps to have a foundation to stick things to.

Here are two of the lovely papers:

I have stuck them down to make backgrounds and as soon as I can get finished with this workweek-thing that steals my time, I will begin embellishing these pages, as well as sewing some other fabric-based ones....

Wednesday is Hump Day (as in just getting over the hump in the middle of the working week, NOT the other kind of hump.) This isn't THAT sort of blog ;)