Best Magazines to Mangle (Cut Up for Collages)

I started this spread with neocolor II crayons and doodling. I then added the collage elements and finally the writing.

I thought I would share some of my favorite magazines for collage images:
* National Geographic
* Psychology Today
* Sunset Magazine
* Vogue Magazine
* Scrapbooking magazines- I recently bought a stash at a thrift store for 10 cents each, not only do they have interesting ideas which can be applied to art journaling, but they also provide interesting backgrounds.
* Budget Travel
* Yoga Journal
* Foreign Magazines. When I went to France in 2003 and China in 2010, I bought a bunch of magazines home. The Chinese ones provide huge amounts of imagery, mainly because their writing is nothing like western letters. Just the text portions of these magazines provide fantastic backgrounds. I can read the French magazines, so I have been much more hesitant to chop them up.
* Women's Day and Family Circle- my grandmother has subscriptions to these magazines, and occassionally I will find good images to cut out. Recently I've been saving images of food so that I can make food collage book covers that are meant to be recipe books.

Check out thrift stores for magazines! At ten to fifty cents a piece, you won't feel bad about chopping them up! I also think thrift stores are a wonderful source of books to alter and cut pictures out for collages. They are the main thing I purchase when I go thrift store shopping. I buy all my fiction books at thrift stores. I can read through a best seller in 2 to 24 hours, so I'd feel pretty ridiculous paying even ten dollars for a book I'm going to finish within 2 to 3 days.

I try to use magazine images only in art journal and book cover collages. I never use them in paintings because of the whole copyright thing. Even then, just to be safe, I attempt to change the images and chop them up well enough that no one can tell where they came from (especially for the book covers.)


The left side of this spread is a piece left over from scrapbook paper that I covered a book in. I wrote a description of how I feel about mornings and glued the essential cup of coffee onto the tree. In reality, that cup of coffee is WAY TOO TINY! I take my coffee in the largest mug I can find in the cabinet and with milk or creamer. The right side of the page is painted and has heart stickers, doodles, and images from a magazine. I wrote on both pages using the Sakura Souffle pens, which I absolutely love.


Here is a cute cuddly sweet kitty picture for you to ponder. I caught them being nice to each other! Note the Michael's ad on the bed. I've found that one of the cheapest ways to increase my stash of paints and art supplies is to use the 40% off coupon in the Michael's ads. The main challenge is going into Michael's and buying ONLY ONE item. I usually limit myself by bringing only ten dollars in cash.

What magazines do you use in your art journals?