I’ve heard the term “Juicy Backgrounds” used by several mixed media artists. What they mean are journal pages that are ready prepped, either by printing or painting or the addition of ephemera, as opposed to a pristine blank journal page. This helps jumpstart the creative juices, and goes a long way towards overcoming fear of the blank page, or Artist Block, if you will.
Which makes a lot of sense to me, as I would love to start an art journal, however I’ve never been able to find something worthy to throw onto a page and go on from there. Until now, that is. When my stash of Gelli Plate monoprints started overflowing, I decided it was time to do something with them. And I hit upon the idea of creating mini art journals with those pages. I love books, both to read and as an art form, and making my own art journals using papers that I’d printed seemed an ideal way of marrying the 2 art forms – Monoprinting and Handmade Books.
I’m calling my Art Journals “Juicy Journals” because they are already filled with colour splashes, abstract shapes, glitter and shimmer, stamped alphabets and numbers, so in a sense they are very “juicy” indeed. They’re meant to be enjoyed on their own, or, if you like, you can draw/stamp/paint/etc over them to your heart’s content. There’s no right or wrong way to enjoy them.
Here are some photos of the books I’ve made thus far. I started out with simply tying the pages together so more pages can be added if needed. Then I ventured into pamphlet stitching, hard and soft covers, and even created a few bookbinding stitches of my own. Two of these “Juicy Journals” are winging their way to friends in the UK and USA as I write this, and I hope to sell/give away/Abandon the others.
Enjoy!
Two horizontal Juicy Journals.
Top: 2 vertical, 3 Alphabetica pocket pages, 2 horizontal, 1 soft cover hand bound, 1 square ring bound.
My 8 original minis, rebound with coloured hemp cord.
Inside one of my “Alphabetica” pocket pages. The 3 little insert cards go into the button-n-string envelope.
My 3 “Alphabetica” pocket pages. I love those little button-n-string envelopes.
Detail of one of the pages of my ring-bound Juicy Journal.
Detail of the inside of 2 of my horizontal Juicy Journals.
AlyZen Moonshadow 
I adore these!!!!! I am playing with art journalling this year as a way of sparking my creativity for my “real” (using that term very loosely) Art. These are very inspirational!
Thanks, Aixie! I’m afraid to try journalling on a blank page, in case I ruin it. By creating pages with random abstracts on it, I find it frees me up to do whatever I feel like. Try it, it might work for you too! Thanks for the compliment :-)!