I’ll tell you something up front: I don’t keep an art journal. I never have, at least not the way we’re told to, with a good book and a page a day. (I’ve written before about why journaling the “right way” doesn’t work for me, and that still holds.) So it’s a little funny how often I end up making a mini art journal for someone else.
What I do keep is paper. Big sheets of it, sitting under whatever I’m working on and catching everything that comes off: brayer roll-offs, stamp tests, the leftover paint I wipe off at the end of a session. They pile up. And every so often, they turn into little books.
This is one of those days. I filmed it live and brought it to you unedited, so what you see is what happened, including the parts where I made things up as I went. It’s a show-and-tell, not a tutorial. There’s no top-down camera, and I’m not going to walk you through it one numbered step at a time. Honestly, this is easy. You can do this.
The paper is scrap, and that’s the point
I started with a half sheet of what I call ephemera paper. Nothing on it was ever meant to be art. It’s the record of other work: a circle from a stamp test, a smear of yellow, a line of marks from rolling off the brayer. That’s exactly why it works. There’s nothing on it to protect.
If you paint at all, you make this paper too, whether you keep it or not: the sheet under a stencil, the scrap you roll extra paint onto, the strip where you test a color before it goes on the real thing. Most of it gets thrown away. Keep a stack instead. Before long you’ll have enough for a whole book.
And here’s the thing I notice every time: the moment you tear a strip off a sheet like that, it looks more interesting than it did as part of the whole. Something about the smaller frame makes you actually look at it.
Tear it, don’t cut it
I tear the pages rather than cutting them, because with scrap paper it’s not worth the trouble to cut. I fold the sheet first to get a crease, then tear along it against a straight edge. Without the straight edge, the tear wanders all over the paper, which might be a nice look too. I tore my strips about five inches tall, by eye, and saved the extra strip for later.
Torn edges have a softness a cut edge never does, and they forgive a lot. Nobody looks at a torn page and wonders whether it’s straight.
Then I folded two strips together. Put them in whatever order looks good to you; it honestly won’t matter. I did pick something I liked for the center, since that’s the spread that falls open first. In mine it’s a circle.
This is where you get a choice. I could have trimmed the pages to fit the cover, and instead I left them long, so they fold out of the book. I like having the long sheets. Each one opens out to roughly fifteen inches, and the book gets much bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.
A heavier cover from an experiment
You could use anything for a cover, even more of the same paper, but something a little heavier works better. Mine came from a stack of mixed media sheets with some gesso on them, from days when I was really and truly just trying things out. I won’t call them paintings. But they’re interesting, and they have some body to them.
I folded the cover in half without measuring, then checked that the pages had a little room inside. Then, after saying I wasn’t going to measure, I measured. I use a quilting ruler for paper work, because all those little lines let you get things pretty straight without working too hard at it. I cut mine to about 4⅜ by 5½ inches, a little wider than quarter-letter to give it some breathing room.
Cutting by hand goes better than you’d expect if you look a little ahead of where you’re cutting and make long strokes with the scissors. Not snip, snip, snip. Long strokes. My fold wasn’t quite straight, either. When you’re done, it won’t matter.
Binding a mini art journal with a long stapler
I bind these with a long-reach stapler, which is really just a stapler with a very long arm. Next to my guillotine cutter, it’s one of the best paper crafting tools I’ve ever bought, and it doesn’t cost much. If you’ve ever folded and stapled a zine, you already know this binding.
You don’t need one. A regular stapler opened up flat over a hard surface does the job; you just have to go back and push the staple prongs down by hand afterward. Or you can sew it with a simple pamphlet stitch.
Tearing off what sticks out
Once it’s bound, there are always a few bits of the long pages sticking out past the cover. I fold them in a little more so they sit inside the way I want, then tear the excess off. That gives me an interior that’s tidy, so to speak, if torn paper inside a book can be called tidy. I love the imperfect, not-so-tidy look of it.
Those torn-off pieces don’t go in the bin. They become little inclusions you can tuck inside the book, ready to glue down or keep loose.
Started, not finished
So what’s this got to do with art and creativity?
When I’m done with one of these, it isn’t finished. It’s started. That’s the best thing about them. There are marks on every page already, and none of them were trying to be good.
There’s a story we artists sometimes tell ourselves: that the first mark has to be the right one. That you need the proper journal, the proper supplies, maybe a class, before you’re allowed to begin, as if making things happens through some magical process only a chosen few can access. A page that’s already started skips all of that. Your first mark goes on top of mine, and nothing about it can be ruined.
I’ve noticed that people who say they don’t know what to make often know exactly what to do with something half-done. A circle wants something inside it. A smear of yellow wants a line through it. You don’t need an idea. You only need to answer what’s already there.
It’s the same reason I love painting over reclaimed panels. Somebody already made the first move. All you have to do is answer it.
If you want to make a mini art journal
No numbered steps. Just what’s on the table:
- A sheet or two of painted scrap paper: paint-offs, test sheets, anything with marks already on it
- Something a little heavier for the cover
- A straight edge to tear against, and scissors for the cover
- A stapler, long-reach or regular, or a needle and thread
Mine is roughly quarter-letter size, but tear yours to whatever size the paper you have wants to be. Make it crooked. It will still work.
Keep up with the studio
I’m not on social media, so my newsletter is where I share what’s on my worktable, what’s headed for the fire, and whatever I’m making next.
And if you’d rather start with one that I’ve already begun, a few of these little books are in my Etsy shop. Each one has a hand-painted cover, fold-out pages and a few tuck-ins, ready for you to finish.
What’s sitting in your scrap pile right now?
Made by hand, released without permission.
Shine your light! Monette.