I have a Secret Journal

As I have mentioned before here I did the 21 Secrets online course this year and the time that the course is up online is almost over so I have been looking at most of the videos again just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. It also reminded me that there are various of the projects I started in these classes, that I haven't shared here yet. One of them is the journal I made in Terri Kahrs' class and that's because it is a work in progress. It lives in a box in my studio together with all the items I still want to add to it and when I have an idle moment (not often!) I do some more work here. The whole idea is that if you're journalling you might want to keep some words to yourself only and the course concentrated on ways to hide those words from others.
Above is the front cover and the title I gave my journal: Art Play. The picture is of me, many, many moons ago!

One of the things I loved about this journal was that it enabled me to use all those treasures I keep on gathering, such as photographs, images cut from magazines, cards I particularly liked, rubber stamps, washi tape (now there is a collection and I keep on buying more!) and the like. I combine them and then tip them into the journal as shown above. Please note that the one thing I haven't done a lot of yet here is actual journalling as after that I tend to keep my journals to myself, secret hiding places or not!
Here you can see several of my favourite things such as Venetian masks, the artist Frida Kahlo and that ubiquitous washi tape.

The backgrounds were done with watercolour and gelato sticks as well as stamping. My habit of hanging on to cards that I like came in ever so handy for this class. The multi coloured flower at top left was done following the Flower Power segment in 21 Secrets, by Ro Bruyn. It uses the patterned inside of envelopes.

The item on the left is a flap, only attached at the top, that can be lifted and secrets can be written underneath!

 Above some more examples of favourite cards. Sometimes I even buy them specially!

This page is still quite virginal and by the time I'm eventually finished with it I expect it to have much more going on there. On the right is one of my own photographs while the image on the left comes from a catalogue.

Above another tipped in envelope that has been stamped extensively, another Ro Bruyn flower and a picture of a detail from one of my quilts called Of Immortality. There will be a lot more going on in this journal till I finally decide to call it done, probably when it becomes too thick to add more. I loved this class because it offered me an opportunity to use some of my massive stash of all kinds of everything!

There will be a new 21 Secrets class next year, this time in the shape of an e-book that you can keep forever, rather than having to do the class in the allotted time span of 1 year. I've already signed up despite worrying slightly about the digital size of that e-book. I'll deal with that when the time comes, I'm sure.