Recycled doodle journals

I had 2 small desk calendars to recycle

Once I trimmed the end stands off and flipped the covers over, I have 2 spiral-bound journals with sturdy cardboard covers ready to go. 

I love that they don't have too many pages so I should still be having fun by the time they're finished. The pages are glossy at the moment but paint and collage will fix that, and then I'll only need to work with pens so they'll be great to travel/couch art with. Lovely bonus that they didn't cost me anything ♥ Alisa Burke is my inspiration for these journals. See her blog posts HERE  

and HERE

Or be inspired by watching her on YouTube - altered magazine faces HERE and white pen doodles on painted background HERE. 
I bought a LARGE chisel tip black pen, and already had a variety of others (stashed in my fabric pen case which I doodled on also inspired by Alisa Burke!) 

I did a few base pages - decided to keep one journal for faces, and the smaller one for just for paint patterning. I searched for matte magazine pages for the faces

and then discovered that I really need heavy body paint to cover the glossy calendar pages. This was my first attempt - thought iridescents would be lovely - but hardly any coverage and this was with white gesso added over top while still wet - yuck!

Another layer of paint fixed it - the black is heavy body but the colours are just student acrylics. 

I used the same heavy body black to fill in around the faces

I've begun doodling on one so far using a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen (click on any photo to see it larger)

She's not quite finished yet - I'll share when she is. Such a meditative and wildly fun process ♥ Can't wait to show you more.... I am leaving the covers til the end when I have got into my groove with these.