Have you ever found yourself in a creative rut of sorts? Like, you’re tired of creating the same sorts of things and want to try something new? Or it could be that your process isn’t working for you anymore–it happens–and you’re at a lost at what to do next?
I’m currently in one of these ruts.
I feel like all of last year, I established a creative process that kind of worked well for me, but lately I’ve been feeling that it didn’t leave me much room to try new things and grow. Scrapbooking, planning and art journaling were three separate things for me and lately, I’ve been feeling the need to combine them all into one thing, because for some reason, I just want one place to keep all of it. I don’t know. It could just be my tendency to want to try new systems out just to see if they work for me. I’m not really afraid of change, so trying out a new process/style or two doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is the frustration that the new process doesn’t quite work for me, because then I’m left to figure something else out.
So I’ve taken a break from scrapbooking. I still keep my memory planner, where I document my everyday, as a replacement for Project Life, of sorts. But as far as layouts, minis and such, it was a fun ride, especially for getting DT assignments done, but I needed a break from it all.
Instead, I wanted to get back into art journaling–or rather, journaling however I feel like it. So if one day I just want to write, well then I’ll just write. If other days I want to play around with images and paint, then I’ll do that. I found that I’d been limiting myself to what’s easy and quick and what I’m used to, but I wasn’t really expressing myself with words like I want to. Journaling has always been a thing I did. I absolutely sucked at keeping a diary of sorts, but I always wrote. I’d noticed lately though that all of my journals are image heavy and I really did miss the writing aspect of it, so this year I’m trying to be conscious of that, even if it’s just writing about my ordinary day. I just feel like I need to get words involved again.
So yeah, I wanted to focus more on journaling and doing it daily. I started the year off with a Hobonichi art journal, but that process just didn’t work for me. I’ve realized I don’t like being constrained to time. I want to work in a journal whenever I feel like, so the whole daily art journaling bit just didn’t suit me. So I decided to take another approach. I made a little traveler’s notebook junk journal to work in. I just wanted to try it out and see if this process worked for me. And while I like it now, I’m not entirely sure it will work. I’m already having a few challenges with it, but I’m going to try my hardest to see it through and fill up at least this one little journal I made myself.
I still wanted to share a few of my pages though in this new style of journal. I’ve got a few “journal with me” videos up on my YouTube channel showing you my process of creating a few of these spread. I think once I finish off this little book, I’m going to try art journaling in a different way. I leaning towards journaling in loose sheets then putting it all together in a binder of sorts. I’m not entirely sure yet, but it would be a nice departure from using a bound book, which I’m used to using. It doesn’t hurt to change up your style every once in a while, so I’m going to try that. I’ve also been toying with the idea of incorporating a bit of scrapbooking in that particular journal, as it will be easy to add in more mini layouts, pocket pages, and the like into an unbound art journal, especially if it will all end up in a binder. I’ve been greatly inspired by my favorite Suse Fish for this idea, but I’m not entirely positive I will go through with it. We shall see.
