Art Journal: A Day in Your Life
Collect Items During a 24-Hour Period to Create Page Spreads.
This art journal prompt is a two-day project, so please be sure to plan ahead. Day one is for collecting and day two is for creating.
What do you do in any given 24-hour period of time? Do you spend that time in an office or classroom? Do you spend that time caring for children and a household? Do you spend that time spread out all over the place running errands in the midst of everything else I have just mentioned?
You are not alone. Rather than focusing on how tired or spread too thinly you are, focus on some positive art making opportunities. On a particularly busy 24-hour period of time: (this is an example of a list, not an exhaustive list)
- Collect everything that has to do with what you are doing
- Save all your receipts (reproduce them if they need to be retained for tax purposes)
- Gather sales flyers from stores visited
- Grab brochures from businesses you stop by
- Create a detailed to do list of all the places you go and things you do
- Take pictures of some (or all) of the places you go
- If you eat out for lunch or dinner, take a menu, napkin, or anything else to do with the restaurant
- Save snack wrappers, labels, and packages from food you ate
Along with these items, you will need the following materials to complete this mixed media art journal prompt:
- Art journal
- Heavy-duty glue stick
- Walnut distress ink
- Black ultra-fine sharpie
- Memo paper
- Post-it notes (or similar size paper)
Follow these simple instructions to complete this mixed media art journal prompt:
- Along the top of your art journal page spread, write in bold letters the date you collected all the items for “A Day In Your Life”. You may also wish to add that title below the date or somewhere else on the page spread.
- Spread all the items out in front of you and plan out a collage. Using the walnut distress ink, add ink along the edges of small items so they do not get lost on the page.
- Using the memo paper and post-it notes, create faux reminders and lists that would have gotten you through that day better. Add distress ink along the edges of these items as well. Crumple some of the papers to give them an interesting appearance.
- Affix each of the items to the page spread, layering them on top of each other. Create the collage so some of the text on the note papers are covered and so on.
- With the black ultra-fine sharpie, add additional text in the blank areas of the page spread. Write out your thoughts about that day, the things you did not have time to accomplish, and what you liked about what you did accomplish.
That is all there is to completing this “A Day in Your Life” mixed media art journal prompt. Encourage your friends to collect things from a day in their life, too, and then get together and work on these art journal page spreads together. This is also a good opportunity for introducing basic art journal techniques to children and teens.
