The Decorated Page: Journals, Scrapbooks & Albums Made Simply Beautiful

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Review: Gwen Diehn does a wonderful job of demystifying the process of creating a visual journal. With complete instructions and suggestions of what materials to use and how to use them she has given us a workshop in a book! Throughout the book are color photos of journal pages from everyday people with everyday experiences who, through their collages, writings, and drawings, show us how to make each day extra-ordinary.

Rating:
Summary: Sets a journaler on course and creates a process
Review: I am a big fan of books, and love art, but not as much a fan of "do-it-yourself" books. This book, however, changed my course in journaling. It describes clearly a process for making an "every day" journal into a piece of art. Gwen Diehn writes and then provides examples of how to create either a simple or an eloquent journal page. She sets a slow and steady pace giving the reader an opportunity to "absorb" the content. Each page builds on the preceeding page and its examples are helpmates for either the novice or the experienced artist/journaler to build his/her own skills. She elected to show some very experienced journalers, many of whom I recognize from other art communities, and all of whom are able artists. The book is not intimating, and it is perhaps its lack of pretense that both delights me, and confuses others into assuming this is a beginner's book. While I may have known some or many of the techniques Gwen Diehn shares in "Decorated Page" I found her re-igniting my desire to do it rather than just think it. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in journaling, collage and altered books. While the book is not necessarily directed to altered books or collage artists, many of the schema are apt for these venues, and certainly they can be easily adapted. This is one of the few books I read "cover-to-cover" and keep next to my ready read room. I am certain I will be referring back to its text and admiring its content for a good long time.

Rating:
Summary: Be stimulated to create!
Review: I journal in the straightforward way with a lined journal, pen, and my thoughts. While I enjoy getting my words and impressions on paper, I often feel as if there is something missing from my memories - that there is something I can be doing to make my journals go from being average to amazing.

Enter THE DECORATED PAGE...you will be challenged to create lasting pieces of artwork within your journal pages and in the process evoke more feelings then you ever thought possible. I have often seen books with creative journalers' pages presented in a "look-see" kind of way, but never thought I'd be capable of making such pages myself.

Gwen Diehn presents lists of supplies you need to get started and many methods of creating within your pages such as mandalas, cut-outs, grids, and others. She also shows different ways to present your thoughts within your writing. You will be inspired to use this book as a springboard for your own artistic and thought-provoking journal entries.

Rating:
Summary: Be stimulated to create!
Review: I journal in the straightforward way with a lined journal, pen, and my thoughts. While I enjoy getting my words and impressions on paper, I often feel as if there is something missing from my memories - that there is something I can be doing to make my journals go from being average to amazing.

Enter THE DECORATED PAGE...you will be challenged to create lasting pieces of artwork within your journal pages and in the process evoke more feelings then you ever thought possible. I have often seen books with creative journalers' pages presented in a "look-see" kind of way, but never thought I'd be capable of making such pages myself.

Gwen Diehn presents lists of supplies you need to get started and many methods of creating within your pages such as mandalas, cut-outs, grids, and others. She also shows different ways to present your thoughts within your writing. You will be inspired to use this book as a springboard for your own artistic and thought-provoking journal entries.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: I received this book for Christmas and I've taken it everywhere with me since then. It's the best gift I received. I found the pictures of journals inspiring. The author did a wonderful job of demonstrating new techniques. The techniques that weren't demonstrated can be easily figured out from the pictures. I feel creative and impowered by this book. Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners, but I was disappointed
Review: I started journaling in 1999 after reading about it in Teesha Moore's zine, The Studio. Ever since then, I read everything I find about journaling. I bought this and was disappointed. Not only had I seen a lot of the ideas before, but I disagreed with some of the things said. For instance, Gwen tells readers to be careful with what she calls "predetermined materials" - anything that is common enough to be a cliche. She gives the example of a certain kind of gift paper that is popular and advises not to use too much of this sort of thing, lest the journal become cliched. Well, I used a Playboy bunny head sticker on a journal page last summer and was happy with how the page turned out. The Playboy bunny must be the most "predetermined material" there is - everyone is familiar with the rabbit head and has strong opinions - good or bad - about what is stands for. Due to copyright concerns, I would never be able to sell this without legal hassles, but I don't care, as this was a journal I did for myself.

Nevertheless, this book is good for someone new to journaling. I prefer Teesha Moore's PLAY.

Rating:
Summary: Well Worth It!
Review: I'd been holding off on buying Diehn's book until I'd picked up a few that I thought were "more important". So when a friend sent it to me, I was AMAZED at how wrong I was about needing others on this subject.

Diehn goes through almost every aspect of creating a journal that's unique, personal, and most importantly (to me) VISUAL. There are background and layout techniques for those days when you just don't want to do too much drawing, lots of examples that are more inspiring than a personal visit from the Muse, and a TON of SUBSTANCE -- real ideas for turning your daily logs into works of art that you can flip back through with pride. It answered quite a few questions that I'd still had for a while now (and I wrote a book on visual journalling, so these were big questions), and got me moving in a forward direction again.

If you're just starting out, or if you've been keeping journals for what seems like FOREVER -- this book WILL HELP, WILL INSPIRE, and will be WORTH EVERY PENNY. Go get it now!

Rating:
Summary: Making a journal pretty -- challenging in more than one way
Review: I've been journaling since I was a child -- more than a half century ago -- and in all those years it never occurred to me to make those journals into more than just pages of writing. I took the writing (and thinking) too seriously, I guess.

"The Decorated Page" is full of ways to trim, color and decorate pages so there's more to a book than the words and thoughts. I'll have fun experimenting with this and it occurs to me that in using color, trims and other embellishments I'll be challenged to make my words more effective in order to compete with the decorations!

Rating:
Summary: BORING!!
Review: This book is sooooo dull. I find the pages to be very uninspiring. If you're looking for good ideas for altered books and journals skip this one and try "Artists Journals and Sketchbooks: Exploring and Creating Personal Pages" by Lynne Perrella instead.

Rating:
Summary: Great Ideas, Presented Piecemeal
Review: This book tries to do too much and too little at the same time. It touches on a number of ways to embellish pages in books, whether blank or already written on. For those pursuing these kinds of papercrafts, this is a book about "artist's journals" and "altered books."

This book has a smattering good information on each topic, and the "supplies" section at the beginning is very well thought out, but the organization of this book is very strange. There are little historical essays, which are very superficial, stuck in among technical how-to sections.

Good for a roadmap but not an overview of its subject. It would have to be a lot longer.