Visual Journaling Class

I just finished up a 4 week class with Laura Lein-Svencner that was absolutely delightful. (You can find her blog here.)  First of all, it was held in an old Victorian mansion that is being restored by the forest preserve district, which provided lots of beauty and inspiration.  And, although the winter weather kept us from going outside to enjoy the grounds, the windows let in plenty of sunshine and lovely views.

In the class, we all brought blank journals and learned lots of techniques for filling them up.  Here's a few pictures to give you a flavor of what we all learned together:

Here, Laura uses a rubber stamp she has made out of an art gum eraser to add interest to a page.  You can get the erasers at any art store, draw a design on one edge, and cut carefully around it with an exacto knife.  You can see a few more of her home-made stamps in the upper corner of the picture:

This page was created by Liz, who was great at using color and symbols to create beautiful pages.  (Sorry it's upside down).

 This was one of Joan's pages.  She used vibrant colors and images, along with text.  Can you see where she reinforced her page by stitching a red plastic mesh produce bag to it?

 A couple more (sideways, sorry!) pages from classmates.  Joan created the one with the graceful stencils.  To do this, we cut figures out of magazines and used pastels to outline them.  We sprayed them with fixative between coats so they wouldn't smear. 

 A final (sideways) page from Caroline. She has a great sense of layout and design.

I don't have any pictures of my journal pages, but I'll try to take some and post them soon!  Laura is such an amazing instructor.  You can practically feel the creative ideas flying around the room!