A beginner’s supply list for creating a Flourish Journal

You don’t really need much to create a Flourish Journal – a notebook and pen would do – but sometimes it’s fun to invest in a few supplies that can add colour and personality to your Flourish Journal.

Here is a list of some of my favourite supplies.

Journals

To be honest, I haven’t yet found a favourite journal and prefer to make my own or to alter an old hard covered book. But here are a few options you might like to try. These have paper heavy enough for art journaling. You may prefer one paper type over another and also one journal size over another.

• Moleskine Art Plus 3.5 x 5.5 pocket journal: A small journal fits in your purse so you can work on it anywhere
• Moleskine accordion fold journal: This journal folds out to one long sheet of paper.
• Strathmore watercolour journal: Has intermediate weight water colour paper, which is ideal if you want to incorporate a lot of acrylic or water colour painting in your Flourish Journal.

Paints & Gesso

• Golden Fluid Acrylics: A versatile paint, ideal for mixing, tinting and shading.
• Windsor & Newton Water Colour Tubes: Good quality water colour paint.
• Faber-Castell Water Colour Pencils: Water colour pencils are great for providing detailed colour.
• Liquitex Gesso: This relatively liquid gesso is easy to spread across journal pages to give tooth when using acrylic paints. It can also be used in place of white paint.

Glue & Adhesives

• Liquitex Gel Medium: I prefer the gel mediums that dry with a matte surface.
• Amos Glue Stick: Strong adhesive for all paper projects.

Pencils, Pens & Ink

• Prismacolor Coloured Pencils: Great for adding colour without the mess of paint.
• Micron Black Pen Set: Excellent for outlines and text.
• Uni Pin Drawing Pens: Another option for text and outlines.
• Gelly Roll White Pens: great for writing over dark surfaces.
• Liquitex Ink: These inks provide loose colour for page backgrounds or can be used with a dip pen for writing.
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink: Great for giving age to your pages.
• Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink: I love using these inks on tracing paper or vellum to create semi-transparent pages.

Craft Tools

• Book Binding Tools: this kit is ideal for creating leather and paper handmade journals and includes awls, needles and waxed thread.
• Washi Tape: Ideal for embellishing pages. I love the floral varieties but there are loads of choice on Amazon.
• Erasers & Lino Cutting Tools: to create your own stamps. A basic set of lino cutting tools will do the job.

Thrift Shop Finds

• Magazines: a great place to find imagery for collage into your Flourish Journal.
• Books: can be altered to form your journal. Children’s books and encyclopaedias are great for imagery.
• Wallpaper: provide interesting backgrounds for journal pages, although if the wallpaper is acrylic it will need to be sealed first, otherwise other materials, including paint, will not stick to it.
• Textiles: material provides attractive and colourful backgrounds for pages, can be used for collages, and can provide interesting textures to pages. Old lace can be used to print through.
• Sewing Patterns: provide slightly transparent backgrounds.
• Buttons, beads, ribbon, lace, and jewellery: can be used as decorations.

Things Around the Home

• Tea & Coffee: great natural materials for creating aged and stained looking backgrounds.
• Old wrapping paper and greeting cards: useful for backgrounds and images.
• Gift bags: can be used a pages in a handmade journal or as added pages in an existing journal.
• Flowers & Leaves: can be used to create natural prints.
• Sticks: can be used as painting or writing tools to create organic random marks.
• Bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, toothpicks, drain covers, tinfoil, plastic bags: these objects and others like them can all be used to create texture on your pages through stamp making techniques.