Art Projects and Glue Books

Lately, I've been coming up with more and more ideas for art projects... [Who would've thought, way back when I was a kid, that I'd ever be interested in creating art on a regular basis? Sure, I always liked the craft projects in school, girl scouts, etc, but at that time, they were an end to themselves.]

I'm coming up with ideas from one of the online art groups that I participate in--and the swaps I've been involved with has really expanded my self-imposed limits. And I've recently got a quilting friend interested in creating artist trading cards [ATCs] after seeing some of mine. And even though she just started about a month or so ago, she is GOOD. I would've never had known that she was new to ATCs if I wasn't the one that got her started.  She's shown ME some new techniques in making this pieces of art by incorporating fabric into them [or only using fabric with added ribbon or fibers, sometimes beads or stamped quotes [frequently using light colored fabrics to stamp the quote onto].

I've been reading a number of different books about art journaling and I've gotten tons of ideas for art journals of my own. Who says that journals have to be text only? How often do we hear people say that they don't do the journal or diary thing because many times, they can't think of or know how to put their words onto paper?  We don't have to be good at drawing or coloring to make these things. Even stick figures, icons, or basic line drawings can work [using colored inks, crayons, markers, paint, whatever]. 

If that's still too difficult to start with start off with making a glue book.  What's a glue book? Glue books are pictures and/or words/phrases from magazines, newspapers, brochures, newspapers, junk mail, whatever, glued onto a page.  These can be glued down in a random order--side by side or overlapping, whatever you want. Or you can come up with a specific theme for your page. Or create a picture with your cut-out images.  Anything goes! Other things can be added-like ticket stubs, take-out menus, jar labels, stuff from boxes of food, etc etc.

You may use a journal for your glue book [and it's ok if you make a page that's smaller or bigger than the book page; glue it in anyway; it's ok to have stuff sticking out].  Or make your own journal book--for example, you can create your glue pages on an individual basis then take it to someplace like Kinko's and have them bind it for you. Or cut out similar/same sized card stock [different colors, if desired], have Kinko's bind it, then create.  Or use an old book and add stuff to the book pages themselves [if the pages are too thin, glue or staple a few of those pages together first, let dry, then use...].

Anyway, I need to finish cleaning/better-organize my art room so I can do more than just think about these projects.  Anyone with me?

Somewhere along the line, I'll start adding links to some cool websites so you can see what others have done...