Wendy Whipple saw our shout-out for mixed media art journal photos, and was happy to pass along some pictures of her altered book/art journal.

“The theme of the journal is belly dance, and how I came to it,” Wendy says. “I found a book entitled Evening Class to use (my classes were at night) and then I discovered the first couple pages contained words that actually were relevant to MY story. Kismet!”

Here are the first 10 pages of Wendy’s gorgeous art journal;

Torn and cut mulberry paper, surrounding the book’s title, appropriate because my belly dance class was – in fact – an Evening Class.

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The edge. Each of those fringes attach to a tab. Each tab is a section of a journal I wrote for the 8 weeks of my first session.
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More mulberry paper (the back side of the title page) and the painted first page, highlighting words that were already there. The pocket tag has a picture of me as a baby, and a little journal note on the back.
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More highlighted existing words. Facing page has dance-related quotes, and a dancer I painted with acrylics on a paper towel (I don’t know why I did it, but it looks cool). 🙂 I used chalk pastels to edge around the quotations to make then stand out.
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The big image is from a newspaper article about Dancing with the Stars if I recall correctly, but the swirling skirts and bare waist of the dancer reminded me of a belly dancer.
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Colored pencil, pen, and computer-generated clip art. Journalling in my own wretched handwriting.
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Facing page: computer generated journalling – much more attractive! and an embossed block of a paisley design using clear embossing powder.  The other in-progress pages look very much like that purple page: a printed block of journal on a plain painted background. I have yet to enhance, embellish or junk them up further… although I am itching to do so.
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Wendy lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and daughter. She’s played with mixed media art for several years, but has only been “serious” about it since 2007, starting small with ATCs. In addition to paints and glues and shrink plastic, she enjoys photography, belly dancing, and online gaming. (For the Horde!). More of Wendy’s work can been seen at her blog The Creative Miscellany.

Thanks Wendy for sharing your art journalling adventures with us.
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