The Magic of You: We All Need Different Things at Different Times

Free tutorial: Accumulate, Curate and Use Magazine Images in your Art Journaling and Collage Art with Sarah Gardner

If you are anything like me, you are wildly curious about pretty much everything that falls under the umbrella of mixed media art and art journaling.

A little over a year ago, I launched a popular course on Willa Workshops called "Love Your {Imperfect} Letters." That course contains 30 art journaling + hand lettering prompts that follow weeks of traditional lettering drills to build muscle memory and instruction on how to observe, identify and choose your own letterforms.

Participants who go through this course become really sparked to use their newfound hand lettering skills in their art journals. The thirty day Love Your {Imperfect} Letters Challenge is 30 days of prompts and detailed instructions for how to actually hand letter into your art.

Shortly after I realized how much this unique lettering course was necessary in this space, I wanted to expand on where we could go with our hand lettering into art journals.

I immediately thought of my friend, Sarah Gardner, @juicy.s.art. Sarah is a published author and an accomplished art instructor. She was a Fodder School 1 teacher and she is back in Fodder School 3 (that's how much we love her!).

Sarah loves words and quotes as much as anyone, and she uses them all of the time in her art journals.

I thought, "If there is one artist who's art journaling work totally intrigues me, who I secretly kind of envy for her artistic magic combined with her use of words, quotes and lettering of all kinds (both hand and every other way possible), it is Sarah!

So I made a proposal to Sarah:

Create for Willa Workshops the follow-up course to Love Your {Imperfect} Letters, PLEASE. We need you.

That was one year ago.

Sarah said YES.

Fast forward 12 months . . . Sarah's course is finally here. Only it is SO MUCH MORE than I could have ever imagined it would ever be.

What started out as "Love Your {Imperfect} Letters 2" became this:

"Love Your {Imperfect} Art Journal" with Sarah's 17 years of art journaling experience, trial and error. Sarah is an OG of the Art Journaling world.

It may simply be the most complete course that I have ever seen on what I call "traditional, grungy, emotional, layered art journaling" that I have ever come across.

It is the kind of art journaling that turned me onto mixed media art 25 years ago when I first saw it. Only it looked too intimidating and complex and I had no freaking idea how to start or how those artists cooked up their magic. So I ran far away.

Sure, I came back years later and tried. I took many an art journaling course, let me tell you. But I still never really found my groove with this style of journaling and it kind of broke my heart a little.

But here we are today.

Can someone please pinch me? Sarah created this FOUNDATIONAL and ENCYCLOPEDIC course for all of us on Willa Workshops? And now those of us who feel as I do get an opportunity to finally climb this mountain once and for all?

Sarah went so far above and beyond where I asked her to go.

And as Sarah jokingly likes to say, "I'm not mad about it!" 😂

Sarah uses many different materials in her art journaling, and just one of them is magazine images that she collects and stores in a particular way so that they really are useful to her when she makes art.

Sarah shares with all of us what she looks for in an image, why she chooses particular images, and how she actually keeps them so that she can use them when the time is right.

Free tutorial: Accumulate, Curate and Use Magazine Images in your Art Journaling and Collage Art with Sarah Gardner

register here for the FREE tutorial

If Sarah's art journal spreads intrigue you like they do me, don't miss this opportunity to see inside how she works.

Now, at this point you may be wondering why I titled this blog post “Different Things at Different Times,” and I do want to explain myself!

For a long time I have been longingly looking at artists’ journal pages who appear to effortlessly incorporate magazine fussy cuts into their art. I went through a short stint of cutting things out of magazines and storing them, but I never found any groove with them.

So perhaps with Sarah’s guidance and our shared love of hand lettering, my time has finally come with this particular supply? I think the chances are really high now that I will finally find my way with it!

Thanks to Sarah!

You can also take a listen to this brand new podcast episode with Sarah on Show Up or Shut Up!

We hope you enjoy this podcast episode and Sarah's free tutorial, and that you always go where your curiosity takes you. Don't be like I was 25 years ago! Don't let your fear stop you!

You can listen to the new interview with Sarah right on my website at this link below, OR you can go to your favorite podcast platform and find the episode by searching for my podcast show "Show Up or Shut Up with Wendy Solganik." (Please subscribe, rate and review, too!)

LISTEN TO SARAH GARDNER ON THE SHOW UP OR SHUT UP POD

XOXO,