Ephemera X Art Journey

 Ephemera from my understanding means things you create to use within your art journals, these can be things like tags which most people do but I've also come up with my own ways of creating ephemera. 

Last year I began creating doodles on scrap pieces of paper and decided I wanted to include them in my art journals, this was the birth of doodle ephemera where I used black marker pen or biro to create and now the idea has spiralled into using felt tips to draw with and then colouring or painting them. It depends how I feel as to what method/mediums I use.

The doodle ephemera linked into the collage ephemera which is pattern doodles and scribbles on scrap paper which are then collaged onto printer paper ready to cut things out of.  

The collage ephemera gave me the idea to stick together scrap pieces of paper like insides of letter envelopes *they have dope patterns on* and coloured paper, I then drew on them but started to get art block every time I tried so I stopped drawing on them. I'm not sure what to call the scrap paper ephemera maybe just that. 

This year I was facing mega art block and the idea for cut out ephemera just sorta happened after a friend at the time made a paper snowflake type pattern and I included it in the journal which I then drew in the gaps. She used a recycled material background piece that i'd made to make the paper snow flake. I used a go local magazine for the background and pre painted it ready to be used as a journal cover but the paper snowflake inspired me to think about cutting things out of the recycled material backgrounds, things such as planets; To achieve this I used an empty washi tape roll and drew the circle before cutting it out. 

Then the idea developed from there rather than using the pre painted recycled material backgrounds to create the cut out ephemera, why not just draw on scrap paper singular things, colour in/paint and then cut out. I like to add glitter glue/ glitter paint to the cut out ephemera as it adds a little suttin suttin. 

Recently I've been making mushrooms and mixed the ephemera methods; I used the pattern/scribble scraps without collage-ing them and also used the recycled material backgrounds to cut things out of for example use the pattern scrap for the head of the mushroom and cut out the recycled material background for the stem. You can make many many mushrooms from your recycled material backgrounds especially if you're only using it to create the stems. I'm not sure how this method would work for creating other singular things but it works well for mushrooms, I like the contrast between art supplies and colours used it produces unique vibes. Again I don't have a name for this type of ephemera but they're fun to make. 

I also like to use the decorated papers these include scribble scraps and recycled material backgrounds to cut up into smaller pieces to use within my art journals but this is a very new concept for me that i discovered on YouTube and incorporated it into how I already do ephemera

Have you ever tried to create ephemera? What did you make? or will you try my methods?

Till next time, 

Stevie x