Making a Creative Writing Journal 101

 Have you very wanted to make your own Creative writing journal?  I thought with the end of the year knocking at my back door I would try to slip in some play time and prepare one for the new year...Now last year I was able to create quite a few...I'll post the steps as I go long between shopping and the other holiday and home stuff.

Step one: Purchase a book from the local library...(friends of the library, 25 cents soft cover, 50 cents hard) or from your thrift store, or garage sale-( for the people that live in the warmer climates).  I like to go to the library and pick a book..I save a book from going to the landfill if not sold or given away and I help out the elders in the friends of the library group...

Step Two:  Materials need to prepare the pages..any type of glue, I prefer Mat medium or gel, brayer, nice square brush and some wax paper or deli sheets. 

I start from the back and lay down a deli sheet and pick the first three pages...gluing between each one. I pick three, but you could pick more or less...no set amount  just what I've always done.. I'm going to call these page sections for now.. I usually do about ten or so page sections then let them dry a bit...this took me this morning about a total of 7 minutes to do...so with the holiday time I can run up to my studio and do a few sections at a time... before I know it all the pages sections will be glued together, then I can work on the pages with gesso.  You can use the brayer to help keep the pages flat and get the glue to really stick with a little rolling and pressure  but some people like to use a old plastic credit card or just your hand to smooth things down and help it stick better. Be careful though not to get the glue on the brayer so you may want to use a piece of wax paper...Each time I do a page section I lay that wax paper underneath the section I'm working on so any extra glue goes on wax paper..  

Step three:

Is just to let the pages section dry...You will continue to repeat step two till the book is completed.. I'm showing you the  up right photo angle so you can see what the pages look like..the don't always get glued perfectly which is the beauty and character that starts to happen with the Creative Writing journals. 

to be continued.