Yesterday afternoon, as I was trying to get back in the swing of not being on the cruise ship anymore (my inner ears have yet to get the message…makes for interesting times) my phone rang and it was Paul, my contact at the Big Distributor, the one that was so helpful getting the Pebbles papers to me in time for our last launch, and he was just checking in, making sure things were going well, and wanted to chat about some art journaling trends that they’ve noticed.

So, first, my question to you is: Do you art journal or do you even know what that is? (If not, watch this space come January because there’ll be more on that to come.)

Art journaling is pretty big in the art world right now, and has been for a while, with people using everything from sketchbooks, to old text books to journal in. It’s fun, messy, and super-expressive. I think it’s pretty awesome (if you couldn’t already tell).

While I’ve often said that anything can become a canvas, there are some things that I’ve refrained from altering or upcycling for various reasons. Top of the list? The books of various religions. Empirically I know that these are mass-produced words on paper, just like any other book. But I also know and respect that others see them as far more than the sum of their parts, so while I’ve contemplated turning them into creative canvases in the past, I’ve always shelved the idea in favor of less controversial foundation materials.

See what I did there?

But apparently, not everyone shares my reticence, because Paul tells me they’ve had to start stocking The Bible because bible-as-art-journal has recently exploded!

So my next question is: would you alter a religious book, be it the Christian Bible, the Koran, Torah, Book of Mormon or other works of note? And if you did, would you show it to anyone? Would you show me, because I’d love to see it!

I’m still not sure I would alter a Bible when I have so many other options before me, but it’ll be interesting to see where this trend leads. And anything that gets people tapping into their creativity is something I’m definitely in favor of, so there’s that!

Accessing that creative spirit is what the Creative Mischief Kits are all about, after all. If you’re still exploring you options for this year’s holiday cards, check out a recent post on my blog on just that topic and, of course, there’s still time to get your order in for our CPR Holiday Card Kits.

Here are 2o cards made with the Classic Christmas kit and the first cutting diagrams.

And here are 20 cards made from the Winter Whimsy kit and the second cutting diagrams.