The get messy game

Three prompts and a bonus mini art journal page.

This weeks prompts over at Get Messy have been in the form of a game. Each day we were given one prompt by Vanessa who blogs over at Dans-mon-crane and whose art journal pages (and blog) I  find inspiring!  So far we have had three prompts and I am loving this game and the pages that I’m creating. We still have two prompts to go but I thought I’d share what I’ve done so far, my reflections on this different approach and then add my finished page on Saturday to the end of this post.

With art journaling there seem to be endless possibilities and too much choice sometimes leads me to a place of being overwhelmed and stopping in my tracks. With the #getmessygame I found the format of having just one prompt to complete daily and leaving the page till the next day, totally inspired. Apart from limiting the options which freed me up creatively, the idea of just doing one layer on the page at a time really worked for me.

Most days the time I have to be creative is at the very end of the day, after work, taxi duties, cooking, tidying up and whatever else needs to be done. Most days by this time I am tired and uninspired, but being able to do just a piece or chunk without having to complete anything was just SO doable. I can see that is going to change way I do art journal pages from here on. This game has given me the opportunity to do something a different way and it suits me, who knew. Just shows that you don’t know till you try!

I have also had the idea that for future art journal pages, maybe just maybe I need to limit my options or materials in advance or do one layer at a time. Even if it’s sometimes, so that I can actually get pages done and not take over the entire dining table and floor around it lol! Also that giving something time to evolve can be really interesting, exciting, surprising and satisfying. As someone in the get messy group said ” give your art time to speak to you”. (thanks Amanda)

Actually I’m getting way too many ideas and it’s nearly time for bed and that’s not usually a good combination in the sleep department for me. Thank you for reading my ramblings about my discoveries in art journaling. I hope you have time to do something creative today too 🙂

Emily

p.s So here are my completed pages for the week. After the second last prompt I had these words pop into my head so I jotted them onto a post it note. When the last prompt was journal, I thought those words obviously belonged. So yes my art did speak to me and I am hoping that the more I endeavour to art journal the more freed up I get at being able to express myself in this way. It has been a great experience doing this as a group in the private get messy blog and seeing what everyone else created. If you’d like to see some more pages you can check out the #getmessygame or #getmessyartjournal over on Instagram.