Will It Go Round In Circles: An Art Journal

In January, I started making an art journal, which was inspired by a Fodder School lesson (December’s, I think). I had no idea at the time, but this project ended up being JUST what I needed . . . when I needed it most. Although I always love dinking around with my art stuff, this project got me sneaking off at all hours (even a few times in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep) to just . . . play. It soothed me. It distracted me. It hit the parts of my brain that made me . . . forget . . . for a while.

There are 3 main “themes” that work to pull the whole journal together (besides the color palette). Circles. Cut out “peek-a-boo” holes. And snippets of song lyrics from old songs I love. In fact, the whole thing was inspired by the Billy Preston song Will It Go Round in Circles, a radio staple back in 1972 (seventh grade for me) when my sister and I shared a room . . . and a radio.

I love the papers I created for the pages.  Using all kinds of different papers (sketch paper, packing paper, brown paper bags, notebook paper) I painted and stenciled and doodled to create “master sheets” before cutting them down to make the book’s smaller pages. Once I cut the big sheets down, I organized them into 6 signatures of 5 folios each, and embellished the pages with collage and stencils and stamps and even more doodling. I also added some random stitching with my sewing machine. The pages are very textural and crinkly and really cool to just . . . handle.

I love the textures. I love the layers. I love that Tom added some chemical structures to my pages. I love the lyrics. (That said, I do love some of the pages more than others. But that’s an art journal for you . . . )

The binding . . . that was tricky. I haven’t done all that much binding before, and it’s usually a long time between binding projects for me, so I always need to re-learn and wrap my head around it again. (And re-learn the knots . . . ) But this one was super fun to try. I did have to talk out loud to myself a LOT while doing it. And I had to try some bits more than once. But, hey. It worked!

The following gallery shows the project coming together, along with a few of my favorite finished pages. (There are 120 pages in total, so too many to include.) Just click on any of the photos to go into “gallery mode” where you’ll be able to scroll through the photos individually.