12/19/07

Art Journaller : First Objective

I officially started on my first Art Scout Button on Saturday. I purchased through Pay-Pal the journal to go with it, and got it today! (Why does Pay-Pal seem to take soooo long???) The journal is really cool, although I'm not sure how to fold it. I'm a dork. ;p
So far I've worked on two of the objectives, #1 selecting and naming your journal, and #3 researching examples of others' art journals (more on that one later).
Selecting an art journal wasn't hard, in fact the reason I picked this button to start with is because I had some journals I bought several years ago, and I had been thinking about starting an art journal for a while now, this was a good kick in the butt to get started. The journals I have are blank page books, about composition book size, with a kind of embossed cover (yeah, I'll take pictures soon), they were on super sale, like a quarter each, and "Made in India" which made them even cooler, so I bought maybe 7 of them way back when. Unfortunately, though I have been a diary writer/journaller off and on through out my life (I still have a Strawberry Shortcake key-opening diary from jr. high or high school), I somehow have managed to start with a fresh journal or notebook almost every time I get re-inspired. So I have probably a dozen journals with pages left, some day I will have to somehow chronologize them all. (is that even a word?) So the three of these cool journals that I can find, all had some stuff on the first few pages.
So Saturday, I pulled them all out, to see what could be salvaged, and which of these could be my new art journal. The first one I opened was definitely in my series of started-but-not-finished regular journals, and had a couple months worth of writing, too much to rip out, probably should use that one as a regular journal again. The next one, written in gold ink of all things, looked like my first failed attempt at 'morning pages' they could probably be taken out, even thrown away, so that one has potential for becoming an art journal. But the third one was maybe already meant to be an art journal. I had left the first two pages blank (of course for title page and table of contents-or wiping your hands on, but that's another story) then had a page with my name all done in a font I created back in high school, and on the next page, along with random scribbles, is the quote "If it's the right time, you will know." OMG. I don't remember where I got the quote, there's no attribution. Maybe it was just my own thought, a message from past me to present me. Very weird, and very cool.
And all this time, figuring out which journal to use, I was thinking 'name the journal?? that's kinda silly', I couldn't possibly think of a name, or how to come up with a name for an art journal. But when I found that little message that spoke to me at just the right time, I was struck by what a cool, random, perfect, co-inky-dink that was, and a word came to me that is now the name of my first official Art Journal:
serendipity

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