I love the latest Dina Wakley journals. The paper is thick watercolour paper, it’s a nice size to work in and they hold up well to cutting or tearing. With this journal I decided every layout would have something different: maybe a shaped edged, a cut out, or waterfall edges.
I had a lot of fun doing this. Normally I share the layouts as I go but the process I used made that difficult – I worked in batches, prepping all the pages, then colouring the pages, and so on. Some of the writing isn’t ideal for sharing. Here’s a few completed layouts to give you a feel for this completed journal.
I’m not sure what to call it, but I’m taking 2026 off from selling my art, perhaps even from exhibiting. There’s a number of factors driving the decision, which has been forming for a while.
I’ve been selling on Felt for a couple of years and love it as a platform, but it does best when you drive people there via social media and I’m on social media less and less.
Sales this Christmas have been poor, which makes the time and effort involved not worth it. There’s other things I’d rather be doing with my time if the payback isn’t there.
The rise of AI, image theft, and all that bad stuff, has seen me deactivate FaceBook, delete Instagram and TikTok, and so on. I’m still on Bluesky as it feels safer, for now anyway. Leaving those sites decreased my audience, but it’s at a time when TikTok is changing art marketing so it’s performative, which I hate.
As a side note, there’s increasing online dissatisfaction with how TikTok is making adult colouring, reading and other relaxing hobbies into performative over-consumption.
What’s my plan for 2026? It’s loose yet, but my main goal is to spend the year exploring new directions, rediscovering what I love most when saleability isn’t a factor, and create for the joy of it. I’ll do online courses, explore various media, fill endless journals with experiments. Who knows what directions I’ll discover along the way.
I’ve been making gelli prints ready for a course I’m starting 5 JanuaryI needed to make around 60 A5 papers, and ended up with over 280!
My best friend’s granddaughter is arty and discovering oil pastels. I’ve been finding papers for her to try and, in my art room search, found a couple of old Sennelier sketchbooks. They didn’t suit how I work, so had been abandoned. The pages are perforated so I’ve removed my old work and Sandra’s handing the sketchbooks onto J.
The pages I removed were mainly gelli plate prompts. It looks like I was using masks to print directly onto the pages. What’s interesting is, despite being perhaps 6 years old, there’s many of the same shapes and marks I use now.
I’ve been cutting the pieces up and using them for collage in a small 5×5” journal. I like seeing that history reimagined.
Playing catchup with posting these. Week 6 was a modified colour wheel with Shay Michelle. I discovered although turquoise and similar shades are my fav accents colours, I have very few collage papers in that colour range. I need to get out by large gelli plate and fix that!
Week 7 with LaQuisha Hall was exactly the kind of layout I hoped doing Wanderlust would get me back to. I used to do a lot of this type of art journaling and have become more product driven. This page is about me wanting to be a safe space for people, and wanting my libraries to be a safe space for everyone as the world gets harder to negotiate.
Week 8 with Claudette Hasenjager was a tricky one, I had to push through the colour wheel exercise, and I’m pleased I did. I discovered I’m incapable of working tidily for too long and struggle to add enough white, and overdo the black. I expected to love the Ruby combinations, but they were a bit dark, while the Rouge were a bit dull, but the DWM Raspberry are perfect. The layout, based on the fav colour wheel, is about speaking out for myself and others, speaking up even if worried, and then going aggravation of my vocal cord injury.
This week’s Wanderlust25 lesson was taught by Shawn Petite, who I’ve followed for years. The project involved journaling, prepping the page with collage papers and ephemera that have meaning to you, and using washes of colour that relate in some way to what you wrote. The last step was a self portrait. I won’t go into all the details with it being a paid course.
We started by doing a practice colour wheel. I chose to go slightly off the primary colours, and used DWM Lemon, Lapis and Ruby, with DWM Umber and White, and Liquitex Parchment. It’s not a combination I’d tried on a colour wheel before and I like it.
People who know me well will understand why “voice” is the word I ended up with to summarise my journaling…
My initial layers, there’s journaling under the collage.My colour wheel, complete with a smear thanks to Sabrina’s paw!My completed page.
Cath Sheard Art 