In 2007, I opened a Etsy shop called PAPERCUTS handmade, initially selling comic books and screen prints of my artwork. The following year my son was born! A brand new routine with a newborn plus a somewhat calamitous accident and the resulting elbow fracture meant changing my focus from drawing to making. A friend taught me some bookbinding techniques, and I began hand-sewing PAPERCUTS’ very first Art Journals. Not long after, I began creating a wire-bound version, and used hand-cut pieces of cover stock from discarded library books for a cover. The exact process has developed and evolved somewhat over the years, but the Wire-Bound Recycled Art Journals I created in 2009 became PAPERCUTS’ signature product, and my main focus as a maker ever since!

What Does PAPERCUTS handmade Offer?

Along with Recycled Art Journals and the smaller Screen-Printed Pocket Journals, PAPERCUTS is home to one-of-a-kind Recycled Paper Packs available in a spectrum of colors. They’re designed to coordinate with the journals, but each pack is completely unique. You’ll also find Recycled and Repurposed Ephemera such as game cards and postage stamps.

I’m particularly interested in teaching people about Art Journaling and the profound impact that making space for creativity, exploration and introspection can have.

The Bigger Picture

I truly believe that Art Journaling as a practice can be a major part of healthy self-care. Art Journaling gives us the opportunity to relax, reflect + record, which allows us to connect with ourselves, to intentionally create time and space for introspection. It can also be a place to track our accountability, to record our progress and to see the patterns and habits that emerge over time!

Art Journaling, as a self-care exercise, can be a part of mindfulness meditation practice. Art Journaling can be therapeutic and healing after trauma or during recovery, as one part of self-lead or professionally-guided therapy. I believe that Art Journaling, as an outlet free of expectations or judgement, can be a liberating safe space, even (or perhaps especially!) for creative professionals who suffer from burnout or writer’s block.

Your Art Journal can be the place where you warm up, a place to stretch your creative muscles, to try out new techniques, practice skills and maybe even push yourself outside of your artistic comfort zone.

The Art Journal Movement: an Act of Rebellion

I will humbly insist that anyone can make art, and anyone can benefit from an Art Journal. Anyone, regardless of age, gender, experience or ability.

You don’t have to consider yourself an artist, and you certainly don’t have to be “good” at it!

It shouldn’t cost a lot of money or require expensive supplies or equipment to get started. You shouldn’t need a formal education or lengthy training. Art, and especially Art Journaling is a self-led act in defiance of these types of boundaries!

My Mission

A major goal of mine, through teaching Art Journaling, is to attempt to remove some of the restrictions and limitations that people are taught about expressing themselves through art. I believe in the enormous value of creative exploration; of creativity as play, with less focus on the final product. I want to personally enable and encourage people to discover new things about themselves via the creative process.