Handmade Visual Journals and Sketchbook

I am not a visual journal type of gal. When I took the online stencil class this year many of the students (and the teacher as well) were focused on creating visual journals. I focused more on making little bits of original art.

I have signed up for ARTSFEST 2010 and the woman who organizes the whole shebang, Teesha Moore, is a HUGE fan of visual journals and even makes her own journals from scratch.

Now this really intrigued me. She takes a sheet of 22" x 30" watercolor paper, rips it up, folds it up and ties it up and ta-da! she has a little notebook, ready to fill up with her creations. If you head over to Teesha's Circus and look in the November Archive, she has posted 10 or more videos about making her journals.

I made one immediately after I first watched those videos a couple weeks ago and started collaging and painting the pages just as she showed and then I just, well.....stopped.

I realized it wasn't my style at all. I don't know if I will finish it. I have no photos of it as yet, but I did start a new sketchbook right before I left for San Francisco.

I have just started a couple of pages with pen and ink:

I am not sure if I will add color or text or collage, but I do know that now I am VERY inspired by what I have seen so far while here so I am sure the pages are going to be filled up with seahorses, like the art deco seahorse railing I saw at the Academy of Sciences:
(If you peek through the railing on the left, you can see the albino alligator in the swamp below, but I was focused on the railing)

or maybe a whole page dedicated to the brazen squirrels that surrounded me at the botanical garden, chittering and squawking and demanding food:

Focused on having fun with my new sketchbook!