The art journaling world is full of possibilities and sometimes you can feel overwhelmed “how can I start?”

In this article I want to suggest 3 simple activities that can kickstart your artistic practice:

Meditation art– you can start by simply listening to meditation or visualizations by different teachers and then letting your hands and heart create what you felt/ saw in your meditation. give it 20-30 minutes and remember that there is no place for the inner critic in this activity!

You can start by listening to one of my visualizations here:

https://soul-pages.com/junes-offering-connect-with-your-magic-fairy/

The 7 elements of visual journaling

In my book “Layers of meaning” you can learn all about the 7 elements of creating, This is a very simple way to start working in a journal. the 7 elements are Intention, magical coincidence, background, Image, color, line, and text.

you can start working with one element a day and create intuitive art only with that element.

you can read about the elements here:

https://soul-pages.com/the-book-layers-of-meaning-is-released/

A visual poem

choose a poem you like and create a work of art that is a visual translation of the poem. You can print the poem and cut out the lines and glue them over your art.

This piece of art journaling spread I did after a poem that my mother wrote.

Keeping a journal is one of the strongest tools to improve and transform your life.

One day, more than 10 years ago, I met with one of my colleagues and she showed me this artistic journal… inside I saw amazing simple collage work.

I was hooked and I ran home and started my own collage journal.

In the beginning, I mostly worked with images from magazines and old scraps but after a while, I started to collect my own collages materials, images that spoke to my heart.

Let me share with you one practice that if you do daily-you will start feeling great changes in your life.

• Create a background from one or more of the primary colors
• Glue 3-5 images on different parts of the page
• connect the images with lines
• Add more colors to connect the images
• Look at what you created and give it a “name”, a text that summarizes what you created.
• Additional idea: ask the picture you created as if it was your inner guide: what is the message that I need to know today?

Working with collage images can help you connect with inner parts or inner archetypes that are hidden from your daily conscious. These parts can be positive important powers that you can activate within yourself.

Art journaling has lots of forms and names: visual journal, collage journal, altered book,  junk journal, and more.

One of the practices that I love the most is altered children’s books.

Creating inside a loved children’s book with the seven elements of visual journaling is the most satisfying activity.

I begin by picking up the right book that touches my heart and calls me to engage with it.

I look at the images in the book and I read the story and then I ask myself a few questions:

• Do I love the colors and images in this book?
• Can I see myself covering up some of the images and “inserting” new images from other sources to create a new story?
• Do I connect with the text of this book?
• Can I invent another “hero” that will change the story?

Altering a children’s book is a work of healing inner parts that need our attention.

We create a new hero that symbolizes some of our past challenges and we give our hero special powers that will help her overcome any problems.

In this picture, you can see how I altered a children’s encyclopedia and change the name of the story to be a name “tells” a new powerful story.

“Lila and the world of ideas” is the new name of my altered book and I’m going to connect the ideas of the book with my new hero – Lila, a child that has special powers of time traveling and learning about herself through philosophical ideas.

I’m really looking forward to continuing this journey in my book and sharing it with you!!