Rhomany introduced me to Daisy Yellow's concept of "Slow Journaling." I've been reading the daisy yellow blog off and on for some time but had missed the slow journaling post. If you've not read it yet, check it out. IT's a great idea, especially if you are like me and have seriously crappy handwriting or a background is just not speaking to you.

The concept is that you write very slowing, really thinking out each work and letter and it fills the lines.And the lines are lines you create. Basically you doodle lines on a page, make them thick and thin, wavering, spirals, circles etc… Make them how you like them, but make them. Then get out a pen and fill them, slowly. You can make whatever kind of letter appeals to you, outlines, shadows, in black ink, in pencil, in paint, whatever. Just write.

I'll get some pics up on here of the pages that I've done. You can vary the technique to whatever materials you have on hand. I've done these pages with a ballpoint (space pen), with a martha stewart permanent marker, paint pen, and sharpie pen. Each style of pen gives a different result. It feels different in the hand and on the paper. Also you can really vary the LOOK and feel of a page by varying the lines. I did a few experiments. I had one page where I wanted to fill the page fully with ink, so I did, flooded it right to the edge of the page. I had another I boxed the page off, giving myself a border. On yet another page, I glued some papers down and worked around that. THE final experiment was to take a background, draw squares and rectangles on it and then added the lines inside the shapes. the floating squares on a background was my favorite spread of pages so far.

Warning. This is a very slow and careful technique. A page where you might spend 5 minutes scribbling down a similar sentiment in plain writing might take 25 to 45 minutes with this technique. It's not something you can rush, but it's a technique to try.

I'll get some pictures of this up in my flickr account ASAP. Once you see it, you'll want to try it.