Week 6 ~ Words of Wisdom: Combining words and images

Many of my journal pages start off simply as pages covered in blocks of colour created with a variety of found papers. I have a box on my desk and when I see something visually interesting I throw it in. These found papers include:

• Magazine images
• Postcards, or greeting cards (I sometimes peel away the back layers to reduce thickness)
• Junk mail
• Scrapbooking paper
• Wrapping paper and decorative napkins
• Painted text pages (usually from old Reader's Digest)

When I'm ready to work on some journal pages, I spread out the contents of my "found image" box and start seeing if there are some that go together well. At this point I'm partially ignoring the actual content of the image and focusing on colour, texture and pattern. I work on multiple pages at once, covering them with overlapping colour blocks. 

The more you do this, the more you learn to trust your intuition about what goes with what, but your final arbiter of what looks good on the page should be whether or not it looks good to you. If your pages have some blank spaces, don't worry, you'll need spaces to write in, and you can cover these areas with lined paper to journal on, and of course, they're perfect places to put quotes you've collected. 

Here are some images from some of my ongoing journals showing you how I combine colour blocks of found images and quotes: 

You'll see sometimes I've cut out quotes from magazines, or typed them out on the computer, and (of course) handwritten them as well. I've also used alphabet stickers and washi tape to provide a variety of pattern and colour. Sometimes I write out a quote on a separate piece of paper (scrapbooking paper is good for this) and "audition" it in several different places on several different pages before I glue it down. I think this is the perfectionist part of my personality ~ wanting to make sure I put it in the "right place". Even after all these years, I sometimes still doubt my intuition, so don't worry if this happens to you. If you still can't decide, tape it in with washi tape, which is easily removable and you can move it somewhere else later if you need to. The point is to build your journal pages in layers you love. Your audience is YOU, and you should make yourself happy.