Girl Boss Art Journal Zine

Today I have another art journal zine to share, I love doing these! It’s fun to have a miniature art journal done in one theme. You can find the previous zines I’ve participated in here-Space, Sea, Bold, Vintage, Woodland, Spirit.

The “Zine Squad” consists of 3 main members, Myself, Vanessa and Julia, and then we usually ask another art journaler or two to join us on gifting a zine to someone.

This time, We asked Lauren & Lucia to join us on making this Girl Boss zine for Torrie.

If you didn’t figure it you by the name, this art journal zine is all about us girls. The base and cover were made by Lauren.

Page on left by Vanessa, Page on right made by me. I colored the little earth with markers before distressing it with a bit of white paint.

One of my favorite things to say is “I do what I want”. So, I sort of added that to this page after I finished watercoloring the background and girl.

Page on left by Vanessa (?), page on right made by me.

I grew up loving Lisa Frank stationary (what 90’s kid didn’t?), and since I just happen to have a Lisa Frank coloring book, I had to tear out this page with a unicorn on it to include in the journal. Just had to.

And this one was definitely my favorite page I made in this zine, because, you know- Space!

I found that quote by Erica Kathleen on pinterest and fell in love with it. It also seemed to fit well with the Girl Boss theme.

The galaxy was a picture from last years calendar and actually had Carl Sagan standing on that rock, but I repainted it so it would be a girl. 🙂

I love collaborating on art journals like this! I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine, because the rest of the pages are amazing!

What theme would you make for a zine? There are so many possibilities!

Uncategorized

A Spirit Art Journal Zine

The “Zine Squad” consists of 3 main members, Myself, Vanessa and Julia, and then we usually ask one other art journaler to join us on gifting a zine to someone.

This time we asked the wonderful and talented Sharon to participate in making a “Spirit” zine for our Get Messy friend Sarah.

I did the cover above. I used metallic acrylic paints by DecoArt to paint the sun sunbursts/medallions.

Left page by Vanessa (love that quote), right page by me,

For my first page, above, I started with a washi tape background, covering it in a light coat of gesso and then added a doodle and a good but of watercolors. I also added a small bit of aqua washi tape to Vanessa’s page on the left, because I’m sneaky like that.

Page spread above by me.

You know I can’t go long without adding either a galaxy or a moon to something, so on this page I painted the whole thing with black gesso and then painted on a moon. The quote is one I’ve seen on pinterest a few times and love.

Page on the left by Sharon (I think?) and right page by Me.

Sarah says her Spirit Animal is a donkey, so of course I had to draw one. I stared at a few donkeys on pinterest (my go to source of inspiration) and then started sketching. and I love watercolors, so obviously there is a watercolor background.

left page by Julia, right page by everyone.

I love collaborating on art journals like this! I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine, because the rest of the pages are amazing!

What theme would you make for a zine? There are so many possibilities!

Uncategorized

A Woodland Art Journal Zine Collaboration

The “Zine Squad” consists of 3 main members, Myself, Vanessa and Julia, and then we usually ask one other art journaler to join us on gifting a zine to someone.
This time though, Vanessa and I were sneaky! We created this zine for Julia and asked Torrie and Lauren to play along!

This zine has a woodland theme, because Julia is secretly a fox. I created the cover, although it got added to as it made it’s way around the world, which I love.

The left page above, I started it, with the pink fox paper and the hedgehog and fox tapes. I love how someone added the bear tape as well!

I created the right page on the spread pictured above. I made a copy of a bear painting I did in my 30 days of watercolor challenge. He just fit so well with the woodland theme that I had to include him!

My double page spread pictured above. As I said, I’m pretty sure Julia is a fox, so I drew her with a family of foxes and did a bit of random journaling with it.

Page by me on the left and Vanessa on the right.

When we were at Yellowstone this Summer, I got some pictures of baby foxes, so how could I not include one in this zine?

Left page by Lauren, Right page by me.
I used a gelli print background and some lovely vintage clip art by Pretty Little Studio for this page.

I love collaborating on art journals like this! I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine, because the rest of the pages are amazing!

Uncategorized

A Vintage Zine

This time our zine was vintage themed, we are creatively calling it “Zintage”.

We created this zine for the lovely Karen Gaunt, who is a fellow Get Messy Art Journaler. Patricia joined Me, Julia, and Vanessa for this zine and I love her collage like style.

I did warn the others that if we were doing a “vintage” themed zine, that I was going to have to do a Star Trek page. I mean, how can you have a vintage theme and not have some good ole 1960’s scifi?

Left page by Julia, Right page by me.

My geek slipped out a little more and Wolverine (from x-men) ended up on a page as well. I had an old X-Men comic I’d been saving for crafts and I Wolverine was just so perfect for this page.

Left page by me, Right page by Patricia?

My page above was inspired by vintage quilts. I watercolored some patterns onto the page.

Do you think this girl looks vintage-y, or a lover of vintage? That’s the look I was going for. I painted gesso over book pages and then painted her and my saying on.

Left page by me, Right page by Vanessa

I’ve been saving some vintage clip art from the 70’s, slowly using it in projects. I thought it was the perfect time to use this horse.

I love collaborating on art journals like this! I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine!

Uncategorized

BOLD- An Art Journal Zine

Today I have another art journal zine to share! You can find the previous zines I’ve participated in here- Space, Sea.

This time we made a zine for Sharon. She’s super talented and is always making really fun collages.
Vanessa, Julia and I (The Zine Squad) collaborated with Lauren to make a zine for Sharon, to remind her to always be bold.

This time I created the cover, using just black cardstock. I really wanted to make it colorful, but I felt the black with the white lettering was very bold, so I went for it. I followed Vanessa’s tutorial on how to bind with a pamphlet stitch.

For the first page, I did sort of a “dictionary page”, by putting a description of the word Bold.

My favorite page our of all of those I did, was probably this lion. When we first decided on the bold theme, I immediately knew I had to do a lion in some way. I sketched him on, and then went a bit crazy with watercolors.

Now you know it’s nearly impossible for me to do a project that isn’t inspired by space in some way. I mean, what’s a bold zine with a reference to Star Trek? I kept the reference very small. Just a little “boldly go”, over a background of a gelli print, and a star chart.

Vanessa made the gorgeous page on the right.

This page, while I like it okay, is not my favorite. It just seems a little too messy. But none the less, it has a good message, right?

The page on the left is by Lauren.

I love collaborating on art journals like this! I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine!

More secret zines may, or may not, be in the works! 🙂 Okay, so they are. You’ll be hearing about those soon.

Which is your favorite page?

Uncategorized

Vitamin Sea- A Zine Collaboration

Today I have a fun project to share with you!

Two of my art journal friends Vanessa and Julia (whom I met through the art journaling group Get Messy) and I created a Space themed zine back in August. We ended up giving the zine to one of the Get Messy founders, Caylee.

Well, this past month we’ve created a second zine, this time with an underwater theme to gift to the other talented lady behind the Get Messy Community- Lauren. We even got two more art journaling friends to join in on the fun, Rebecca and Kate!

Here are my pages-

Like the last zine, I did this one while I was still traveling. Which meant limited supplies! I used some cheap kids watercolors, micron pens, and about 6-8 acrylic paints I stole from my sister. 🙂

For this mermaid page, I was inspired by a mermaid drawing I had seen on pinterest, and I love the way she turned out! The mermaid is mostly acrylic paints (I did a lot of mixing colors!), and the background is watercolors.

For this next page, I wanted it to look like a bunch of framed pieces of art. Do you think it worked? I doodled it all with a micron pen, and then went back in with watercolors.

This last page is my favorite of them all! Why? Because, you know.. It has a galaxy! I tried really hard to keep my pages all sea themed, but I love space so much, a moon just slipped right in there.

I printed the moon out and glued it in, then went a bit crazy with paints! 😉

Here is the back inside of the zine, where we signed our names-

Gifting zines is so much fun!

Vanessa built the base of this one, mailing it to me, and then I sent I sent it across the seas to the UK so that Rebecca, Kate and Julia could work in it!

I highly encourage you guys to go visit their blogs and see the rest of the zine!

You can also see the complete zine on instagram here.

What would you do as a theme for an art journal?

Uncategorized

A Space Zine Collaboration

I’ve been working on something fun with a couple of friends of mine lately and I’m super excited to share it with you today!

Two of my art journal friends Vanessa and Julia, whom I met through the art journaling group Get Messy, had created an art journal zine together back in the Spring and it turned out amazing!

Somehow we got talking about the subject of outer space and decided to do a second zine, but this time I got to collaborate with them, which is super exciting!

As you all know I love anything space related. The stars are so dreamy, aren’t they? So of course I was all into this.

Vanessa creates and sells handmade journals and notebooks in her shop, so she made the base of this zine. She created her pages, passed it along to Julia to add her touch and then I got the last few pages to have fun with!

Isn’t the cover so lovely?

I’ve actually been traveling all Summer, so I didn’t even have many art supplies with me when making this, but I just couldn’t say no.

So what I used on all of these pages are some Micron pens (my fave!), some cheap watercolors, and a little black and white acrylic paint.
Here’s my pages, I’m so happy with how they turned out.

For the page above, I painted the galaxy scene with watercolors and then added the song lyrics (by Owl City) on top.

During my stay in Colorado this Summer I was awed by the night skies there and took lots and lots of photos. I decided to print out one of my photos and use it on the page above. Sadly, there is actually a mistake on this page, I meant to write “looking at the stars makes me feel brave” rather than just “me feel brave”, but whatever.

You can see the original photo I started out with below. I printed it out black and white before putting it in the journal.

For the next double spread page (above) I wanted a way to feature all of the quotes about space that I just love and find so inspiring, and with all of the news about the New Horizons probe and new images of Pluto, I decided to paint some planets. That middle planet is my best pluto.

And the last page is inspired by my Sister, Taylor. She lives in Phoenix, AZ, so she suggested I do something with cactus. Why not a night sky with saguaros than? I also love this quote.

Now if you have 2 seconds, please hop over to both Vanessa and Julia’s blogs to see their pages in this zine. Once completed we sent the zine to Caylee as a surprise. Caylee is one of the founders of Get Messy Art Journal, and we felt she should have this.

I loved doing this! We’re actually planning something else for the future as well! 🙂

What theme would you like to make a zine about?