Journaling weeknd

I spent an amazing weekend last weekend with 8 incredible women.

I attended the Journaling Weekend at Graphicus in Barnard Castle with Jo, Lou, June, Janet, Lillian and Sue as well as Glenda and Lynn.  It was actually 2 workshops, but we all attended both so it seemed like a weekend workshop.

Glenda lead us during the Saturday and we began making a loose-leaf watercolour journal and colouring it with Golden paints.  During this time we each talked about why we wanted to journal.  This lead to very intimate and revealing circumstances for each us.

For the covers for the journal we scrunched copier paper, spritzed it with water and painted it with metallic paint.  The paper ended up extremely wet and had to dry til the afternoon.   We then stuck the paper to grey board using book binding techniques.  The board will eventually be stuck back to back with bookbinding fabric between to make the spine of the journal.

The pages for the inside of the journal were made from hot pressed heavy watercolour paper and coloured with Golden acrylic paints and lots of water!  We used stencils and spritzed the stencilled image with water to make it 'bleed', like the flower in this picture.

On Sunday Lynn lead us through writing in different styles in our journals.  We made another watercolour journal, but this time we folded the pages and stitched together in a very simple style.  We all used this as our practice journal.

Lynn had us draw circles free hand and then draw horizontal lines to make a circle.  We then had to write on these lines and draw circles round the writing in pen, then make some of the words stand out.  I found this exercise quite difficult as I hate my writing.  I used to be able to do calligraphy, but MS but paid to that. 

She then asked us the write in a circles so that the letters filled the whole circle.

Then we started to write in spirals.  Once I'd finished this one, in Lou's words, I found my writing.  I am so chuffed that this worked out so well.  I just want to write in spirals all the time LOL!!!

Next we looked at alphabets and how we could change them for different page layouts.  I chose the draw capital letters with hearts on the end of each line (the top alphabet) and dots on the each line (the bottom alphabet).  Now I am more confident on what I can do I am going to practice other forms of alphabet.

When we'd finished this we started on drawing letter and decorating it.  I chose to do zentangle-ish patterns.  As I've only just started to do zentagles I couldn't remember most of the patterns so I just doodled.

The whole weekend was an amazing experience.  We all became so close.  We laughed, we cried and we encouraged each other.  I doubt I will ever experience another weekend like it.

Thank you to all you lovely ladies.