Ellie Claire Art Journals – Review

I love art journals. I love all the creativity with the unique pages and being able to express yourself with them through art. Today I get to share three very completely unique art journals with you. 

I received three art journals to look over: Faith & Lettering, The Illustrated Word, and Illuminate Your Story. Each one is unique and I’ll share with you what makes the contents of each one completely different.

 First, I want to tell you that each art journal is a high quality art journals. The paper is a thick heavy duty paper in each art journal. I love that you can use a lot of different medians in these journals. Markers, calligraphy pens, and water colors won’t bleed through. The paper will also work with color pencils and even those nifty watercolor pencils that I love to blend with.

All the covers are sturdy with the binding being top notch. I really hate it when books come apart at the binding. 

Another great feature is that all the books lay flat while working in them you don’t have to fight with them to keep the book from closing. The covers are embossed and classy looking. 

Two of the books have elastic binding attached to the spine which I assume is to hold a pencil or pen.

All of the art journals have clear instructions of what to do in each book.

Faith & Lettering Art Journal

I have been dabbling in hand lettering lately and was delighted to see this gem. Just looking at the cover is inspiring with all the pretty drawings. The cover is embossed and elegant looking.

Krystal Whitten the author is a graphic designer and rediscovered hand lettering as she stumbled across a lovely piece of hand lettering art one day. One day while creating her own hand lettering art work from Exodus 14:14 she realized what wonderful tool for memorizing the scriptures. 

The purpose of this book is to make it your own art journal through scripture. To write scripture upon your heart as you are designing your own scripture verses that speak to your heart.

The colored illustrations stand out in full color. The detail is so pretty. The art journal has plenty of lined paper for me to do my own thing.

Some of the pages have fully illustrated and colored scripture verses that already have a hand lettering design on it. The next page is a blank slate for you to copy them or to even create your own. This page is line so you could even write down what that scripture means to you. The possibilities are endless.

  I like the added scriptures throughout the pages. The dot grid gives me more confidence when I start designing my master pieces. 

There is a dot graph grids also on several of the pages for the same reason to help with spacing and creating your hand lettering. Many of those pages have scripture in the corner.

Also there is several hand lettering pages that go over the lettering itself using different font styles. Those pages have a graph square grid page to help you portion your lettering and be consistence with spacing while you practice those letters.

A lot of practice pages available for me to trace first and then go free hand with my hand lettering.

Other pages have vertical columns that have a scripture in one column. The next one is for you to trace the hand letter scripture. The next several columns are devoted to practicing the scripture yourself.

Banners are hard for me. I would have loved to see a bit more tips and tricks with them.

There are pages that you can try your hand at banners and flourishes. 

There are a lot of pages that are just line, or have the grids on it for you to create your own master pieces through scripture.

I absolutely love this Faith & Lettering Art Journal book. 

FAITH & LETTERING
Amazon: http://bit.ly/WhittenAmazon
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/FaithAndLettering-BN 

The Illustrated Word: Illuminated Bible Color Journal

This particular book the pages look of parchment paper. The book is around 7”x9”. The hard back book cover is absolutely stunning from front to back.

Look at all the details on the coloring pages. The illustrations aren't to small to color but, not bulky either. Just right for my coloring preferences.

There are 40 beautiful detailed black and white illustrations throughout this book to decorate. All of the coloring illustrations are on a full page. They are recreated from the archives of the Museum of the Bible. You can see full color illustrations in the corner of the pages of the actual manuscript. 

All the sources are mentioned along with an original photo of the manuscript.

The manuscripts are cited from the source. The year of the manuscript is also mentioned for you to learn about the historical era of the illustration.

Throughout the book are several lined pages for journaling. You could take Bible notes while studying or sermon notes. You could also just jot down your thoughts when you feel like writing or feel inspired. 

THE ILLUSTRATED WORD

Amazon: http://bit.ly/Illustrated-Amazon
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/Illustrated-BN

Illuminate Your Story Journal

 I remember a few years ago when my kids where little we learned about the art of illuminating and how scribes would decorate the pages of Bible pages. We even did a craft and created our own with the kids starting a page with the letter of their first name. It was a craft my kids remember after all these years.

Illuminate Your Story Journal has an elastic strap to keep around the book. This is one of the books with an elastic band on the spine.

The history is intriguing to find out about each illuminated style of the letters.

This is in the same style of illuminating a page with a decorative letter to begin each page.

A unique feature in this art journal is that there are several pages devoted to the history of illuminated letters. It covers the history of Insular, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance Illuminated Letters. I love that it covers the culture and region of each style.

It also goes over the process of this art and what supplies are recommended depending on which style of illuminated lettering you design. 

I have a lot of work to get to get my letters to look so elegant but, the steps are broken down enough for me to get a feel of what I need to do to accomplish the final look.

There are a few pages dedicated to designing your letter in which they go over the basic letter shape, planning and sketching flourish placements, outline your flourishes, erasing your overlapping parts and adding other details. Adding color and creating your own. They are several styles throughout the book.

 The complete alphabet is covered in the book and as you can see with the picture above the steps are broken down in several steps. They use the dot grid in these sections.

The same step-by-step design instructions are basically done with creating your flourishes, animals, flowers, and a few other pages too.

I love the variety of quotes from scriptures and individuals.

There are scripture verses and quotes throughout the book with lined blank pages for you to either create your own or just reflect on something. Some pages are the dot grid to help with letter placement and size. 

At the back of the book is a pocket that you can put keepsakes in.

ILLUMINATE YOUR STORY
Amazon: http://bit.ly/Illuminate-Amazon
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/Illuminate-BN

My final thoughts:

Ellie Claire has some of the most elegant art journals I’ve seen out there. I love the faith based element in each of the art journals. The quality is a big plus in each one of these journals. 

I plan on using one of the art journals myself. I can’t decide if I want to keep the Illuminate Your Story Journal or the Faith & Lettering Art Journal. The other two I’m gifting them to my 16 year old daughter for Hanukkah. I can’t wait to see her excitement with them. She has seen me do art journaling and lately has been showing an interest in doing art journal herself. This is going to be new to both of us and I look forward to getting started with my daughter. This will be a fun project for us to work on together.

Ellie Claire has other art journals too that you can check out.

You can find more also here and on Instagram. You can look up the #EllieClaireGifts also.

I received a free copy of this product in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this information accordance with the FTC Regulations.