Inspire Me Thursday: Journaling

This week's Inspire Me Thursday challenge is journaling. Not just sitting down with a blank piece of paper and writing, but using images, paint, colors, textures upon which to write. This is my first experience with art journaling. I've journaled for many years, and have done collage for at least as long. But I've not combined the two in this way before.

A recent experience, an incredibly uncomfortable one, was something I needed to process. I did so in several conversations, but wanted to do some writing about it as well. I wanted to cement the experience---and the processing of it---in my memory. I needed something tangible.

I felt it very important that my art reflect my topic in some way. I found a wonderful magazine cover from at least a decade ago that was the perfect thing. It was patchworked with another magazine page, creating blocks. Searching for just the right images, finding a way to piece them together, and preparing blocks within blocks for writing, were just as important in processing my bad experience as the writing was.

This was, by no means, a quick project. As a result of this challenge, though, I have begun to think about ways I might combine images and words to document more of my life than just the experiences that need to be worked through. Luckily I don't have too awfully many of those! To simply choose a word that suggests the mood, flavor, or experience of a given day might be enough. It will be interesting to play around with some of the ideas I've had, and to share them here.

Inspire Me Thursday