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Home » Art Journal Covers – A Brilliant Idea!

Art Journal Covers – A Brilliant Idea!

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art journal covers

Art journal covers, studio books, note books and albums are some of my favorite crafty things to make.

I never get tired of making art  journal covers because of the scope for creativity and inventiveness.

In the past I have made and sold many albums at craft fairs and people always seemed to enjoy looking through the variety of designs I came up with.

I went through a phase of enjoying making albums entirely from recycled materials. See here for  my YouTube video on how I use junk mail to create the pages for my albums.

This album is made entirely from recycled materials apart from the paint and binding thread.

Recently, I have begun to explore acrylic paint pouring onto canvas.

If you don’t know what acrylic paint pouring is all about, check out this post about one of my early attempts at it – including the things that went wrong!

And if you want to see how it’s done really well, check out this video from US artist Jenny Post.

Jenny doesn’t claim to do tutorials, she makes videos documenting how she creates her paintings but in the  ‘About’ section of her YouTube channel, she also has a list of other YouTubers who do tutorials on acrylic pouring techniques.

So how does acrylic paint pouring fit in with making art journal covers?

Well, art journal covers can be made from anything you can stick on cardboard, so I was thinking, why not canvas?

Canvases and acrylic paint are reasonably inexpensive if you are dabbling around with some of the bargain brands. However, acrylic paint pouring can still get a little pricey because of the sheer volume of paint used.

And when you start out experimenting with it, if you are anything like me, you will end up with a ton of canvases that may not be masterpieces but, are too ‘good’ to throw away (we can kid ourselves!).

So I came up with the idea of using my acrylic pouring experiments to make art journal covers.

If you are creating art on a canvas, the finished product needs to be good enough to make someone want to hang it on the wall because that is the only function of a painted canvas – to be looked at.

But art journal covers are a different story. The main function of an art journal is that it is a usable, working journal that you write, draw or paint in.

And it needs to have attractive covers.

So far, I have not produced an acrylic pour that I would even consider selling or, putting up on my own wall.

But I have had great fun playing with the technique and learning.

The picture you see here was one of my first experiments in acrylic pouring. It’s ok – just ok. I’m not going to hang it, sell it or throw it – so what could I do with it?

There were parts of it I liked and was happy to have as art journal covers and so that is what I did with this painting – I made it into an art journal (see link to YouTube video further up the page).

And here is the finished art journal with covers made from parts of the painting you see above.

art journal covers
Back of journal – should have been the front but if you watch the video, you will see why it had to be the back.
I used a flower punch to create embellishments from the left-over card and canvas pieces.

Products I used to make my art journal covers and pages.

Re using craft punches to cut shapes from painted canvases – the ones I use do go through the canvas with a firm hand, even with the thickness of paint added. But be aware that I don’t know how thick your canvases are and so I cannot predict whether yours will work the way mine do with the punches you buy or have.

Have fun with acrylic pouring if you try it…

…and if you find you have canvases that are not good enough to display, then use your canvases to create art journal covers and tell me about your results.