How to start a Rainbow Glue Book

This week I have been totally obsessed with gluing colorful images into a new notebook. I’m calling this project Rainbow Glue Book or Color Glue Book, and in today’s video I will talk about what inspired me and how you can start your own rainbow obsession!

I hope you’ll be as inspired and happy as I am working in my new Rainbow Glue Book.

What is a Glue Book?

So, first things first. What is a glue book? I think different folks will define it in different ways, but to me it’s just another Art Journal that is dedicated to collage only.

Maybe “glue book” is easier to start if “art” is something that intimidates you a bit?

A glue book is a place to collect (mostly) magazine images that you find beautiful, funny or inspiring. Anything you find yourself cutting out, that is. As you saw in my recent video with the Art Journal flip-through? a lot of what I do in my art journals (especially altered books) is cut and paste, so that’s a glue book idea already. I’ve been a glue book monkey for many years, although I tend to call everything “art journal” because it’s all about documenting life and likes right now for me.

And a rainbow glue book you ask? Let’s watch the video so I can just show you mine real “quick”, LOL.

How to start a Rainbow Glue Book

I was really excited to make this video, I think you can tell? I just love everything notebooks, collage and colors, colors, colors…

If you can’t see the embedded video above, then click to watch here on YouTube.

How to start a Rainbow Glue Book

In written form the instructions would be something like this I think, but feel free to ask any questions and I’ll get back to you.

1. Choose a notebook, like a Composition Notebook that is 9,3/4 x 7,1/2 Inches big, for example
2. Count the number of pages. A Composition Notebook has 100 pages, so if you’re making a Rainbow journal with 10 different colors, you can dedicate 10 pages to each color (or do like Nicole and tape 2 pages together so you have 5 pages for each color.
3. Washi tape the edges of your journal.
4. Time to cut out images. Start going through either a new magazine or your stash of collage materials, and pick out anything that you feel would fit into your journal. You will be looking for mostly monochromatic backgrounds and images, and you’ll have a blast every time you find a new image that fits your purpose!
5. Glue in background patches of color or pattern to start with (using a good glue like Uhu glue stick which is my favorite), and fill in empty spaces with smaller images and details as you go. Jump around the pages, work on what feels good at that moment. Have fun! So much fun.
6. Relax and keep going until every bit of white paper of every page is hidden. :-)
7. You did it, please share the results with me!

Inspired to relax, cut and glue

I have been so very inspired by Nicole of Relax.Cut.Glue on YouTube for this project. The entire idea is from her, and seeing her first video, where she is prepping her Color Glue Book and taping the pages of a Composition Notebook with different colored washi tape, is what inspired me to jump in and do this! Now she has already done a couple of videos of how she’s working in hers that you should check out. I’m new to her channel but have been really enjoying her cutting and pasting lately.

Thank you so much to Nicole!

I also mention my long time favorite Alisa Burke and her use of Compostion notebooks in her art journaling practice.

I love this project so very much. I am in love with my Rainbow Journal, and I don’t want to stop gluing.

I started by cutting out images and parts of images from a few magazines and gathering them in one big pile, together with my mom, last weekend (should I show her book too maybe?).

Since then I’ve also gone through a few folders of collage fodder and it has become obvious to me why this project spoke so much to me. I already had a ton of background colors cut out, just waiting for me to make more monochromatic pages, something I’ve done in art journals in the past and absolutely love doing!

So a project like this felt perfect to me.

It is obvious to me that colors and patterns is what fuels my creativity and makes my art. I love the rainbow and all the colors, and having this in my life makes me feel richer than before. The more I think about it, the more I see “collecting color” as a true pattern in my life. Remember my pink photography for example? It’s everywhere.

Let me know below if this could be a project that inspires you?

Share it on instagram and hashtag it #colorgluebook or?rainbowgluebook and see what happens.

xoxo

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