June

A journey into digital junk journaling with Canva

[junemakesart]

I've been paying around with styles. Using different stickers and sourcing artwork from official sources or at least ones I can credit. I still love the torn paper aesthetic but I'm also falling in love with the watercolor stickers and dried flowers too.

I'm a huge Legend of Zelda girlie. My first video game I truly remember was Ocarina of Time, specifically the Majora's Mask deluxe edition disc for the GameCube. I have a phonograph tattooed on my ankle for the Song of Storms and want more subtle LoZ themed work. I think the series shaped who I am both as a gamer and a creator.

I want to collect all the manga for the series too. Currently I only own Ocarina of Time since it was my first game played. A friend suggested buying a book a year as a Christmas gift to myself, I may do just that.

[junemakesart]

Video games and manga are a big part of my life. I grew up playing video games or watching anime and when I wasn't doing that I watched educational documentaries. There were also some cartoons thrown into the mix, I was a Hannah Barbera I always read it as Bar-bear-ah apparently is Barbara kid.

I don't really have any tips or advice for myself to look back on this week. Just kind of rambling. Same issues are still cropping up but I think I've learned to be at least a little kinder to myself in my creative process.

As always, see you on the next page!

💜June

[junemakesart]

I've felt my creativity hasn't been where it usually is lately. I'm struggling with my pages and I think I need to, again, be more gracious with myself and the creative process. Like my wishlist page, for example, isn't a bad page. It's absolutely a reflection of me as a person and my aesthetic. But it feels... Wrong?

Really I think that I'm just being overly critical of myself and the page. The whole book doesn't have to be cohesive or the same. I can have variation. And I think that variation is important, I need to kick this need to make things perfect and just create something.

The book still has about 10-11 pages I haven't been on so I'm not sure exactly how many and I'm being lazy instead of checking and I still want to get it printed for Christmas.

I've also noticed that when I download Canva pages, since I don't have Pro, the text gets blurry. This is my reminder to myself to arrange it all, take the text out, then download the pages and re-enter the text to avoid blurriness in the actual notebook.

Thanks again if you're joining me on this journey now or in the distant future. See you on the next page!

💜 June

[junemakesart]

Things that I have noticed while doing these journal pages is that Canva gets laggy when there are multiple pages in a single book. A work around to this, however, was provided by another person much more familiar than the software than I am currently.

His advice was to download all your progress to your device - in my case I work on an iPad - and then upload designs you were satisfied with as new pages then delete the previous pages.

Canva doesn't automatically combine elements into a single image so it is constantly loading in all the individual pieces every single time you open the book. For a collaborative journal you ideally want as much in one book as Canva can handle, so the act of saving and re-uploading pages to free up processing space seemed like the best path forward.

As you can see from my pages I have quite a lot in most of them so latency had become quite a problem 10 pages in. I still have a few pages I want to adjust so I can't fix all my problems immediately, but most of them at least can be.

[junemakesart]

Several of my pages have gone through multiple iterations, whether I intended for them to or not. I feel like the book needs to flow in a specific direction, fit into a specific aesthetic. But this doesn't always work for every spread idea.

I'm trying to learn that it's OK to have variation. This journal is about letting go and doing what feels right in the moment. I can be more stringent or adhere to that specific aesthetic with my cookbook I'm building, this is to temper my OCD in the healthiest way possible.

Perhaps with some more effort I'll learn to be less pressed about whether visuals between pages match or not. For now the aesthetic perseveres.

[junemakesart]

This blog has sat empty since I made it so I've decided to use it to catalog my digital junk/art journaling.

Very recently a beloved friend of mine posed the idea of doing a "Sisterhood of the Traveling Journal" she saw on TikTok. She, nor I, really didn't have the pocket change for all the supplies doing physical journaling required so she had the idea to use Canva instead.

I've very rapidly fallen in love with it and have started doing page spreads as a method of self care. As such I've decided to start recording my journey with this blog both as a reminder to myself and maybe to also spark inspiration in others interested but hesitant for whatever reason.

Currently I'm using a lot of the in app free for use graphics. Eventually I want to get to where I'm adding my own art and photographs to it as I continue to familiarize myself with the software. I do my best to avoid any AI assets as they don't align with my own morals but that's a conversation for another day.

Thanks for stopping by, see you on the next page!

💜 June

[devinellekurtz]

My new Grass & Field’s brush pack is officially out for Photoshop CC, Procreate, and Clip Studio Paint! 

You can download it from this page (click!)

Like all my brush packs it is free, with tips welcome but optional. You can use these brushes in anything - personal work, freelance work, professional work, commercial work - including things you sell, no license required. Demo videos are linked on the product page. Enjoy!!