Whoa. The cult of stuff discussion has taken off. On twitter and blogs (this needs a whole post) and other sites.

If you write on twitter about it include the hash tag #cultofstuff so we all can read your thoughts.

Most interesting to me is the discussion from this UK scrapper’s site. Mostly because these people don’t know me and I can safely assume that they have never ventured onto my blog. It gives me some insight into my tone.

It pains me to think that anyone would assume that I would sneer at their art journal. Nothing could be further from the truth. When someone decides to art journal they are stepping into a path of knowing, learning, exploring and experimenting. Sometimes art journaling comes along organically as people want more from their supplies and to see more results.

We shouldn’t take views centric to our particular art and craft as to a path to art journaling. I know people who have come to it from scrapping, others from fine art, others from writing, still more from the altered book realm and I’m sure that there are others who simply discovered art journaling.

We cannot assume that everyone comes to art journaling with the same experiences and tools that we each have. That is what makes art journaling so wonderfully individual.

And that is to say, even if you use mass produced tapes, papers, punches, masks, stencils, stamps and other things. no other person creates with your personal vision, set of experiences, and feelings. It’s still art, and your art.

But I want more. I want more of ME in that page. I want it to reverberate with what I’m feeling at that moment. If it’s a TH tape (that doesn’t stick) then that is what it is.

What I’m railing against here is the mentality that using mass produced stuff like TH’s wonderfully coordinated products and following the exact instructions that are posted to his blog, YT and where ever else. My feeling is that if you reproduce some one’s craft project step by step you are learning. That is great, but what next? Where do you go from making TH’s 12 tags of Christmas. You learned a lot of techniques. Do you take the next step and plunge into applying those techniques to your own work?

My point, and perhaps I’m a tad muddled here, is not that people are copying work but they are taking the easy way out. the companies make this even easier by making you really easy to use products and giving you step by step instructions. Insert tab D into slot C and suddenly you’ve got an art journal. Some might say that following someone else’s instructions is not art, I am not one of those people.

Art journaling is a path to self realization and taking the easy way out isn’t beneficial, it’s superficial. There are no rules to art journaling except that there are no rules.