I was asked to compile a list of the top 20 products I use most often. I didn’t quite make 20.
Please don’t feel like you have to go out and buy any of it. One thing I love about art journaling is that you can use whatever you happen to have.
But I do have some favorites and these are things I use a lot
- Gesso – so far I don’t have a favorite brand but I can say Sargent Art is probably not the best. I have a giant bottle I am working through and while it works fine it doesn’t give as good coverage as some gessos
- Heavy gesso/texture paste/modeling paste – you can make your own texture paste. I use these interchangeably
- acrylic paint - I started out using cheap craft paint. And that is fine but going up a step does tend to get better results. I like Liquitex Basics
- Stabilo ALL pencils. Esp black
- White and black gel pens. My favorite are Signo Uni-Ball UM-153 but I think almost any uni-ball gel pen would work. Uni-Ball elite is pretty good. I didn’t have any luck with Uni-ball Broad but it could have been the pack I got as I know others really like those
- Staz-On black ink pad (I only recently got a white ink pad and am loving the effect)
- Mixed Media or water color paper – 100-140 lb. But really you can use most anything.
- Water colors – I am not an expert on watercolors. I have these and have liked them just fine
- Paint brushes and triangular makeup sponges I use cheap brushes
- Stencils (you can make some simple ones with scissors and paper)
- Stamps (you can make some simple ones with fun foam or use things like bubblewrap)
- Things for background texture: drywall tape, joint tape, masking tape, tiny bits of lace and ribbon, book pages
- Glue. My 2 favorites are Scotch 2-way glue applicator and Art Glitter Glue (it’s not actually sparkly)
- Faber Castell gelatos or gel crayons
- Baby wipes
- gel medium or collage pauge.
I have water color crayons, watercolor pencils, oil pastels and they are all whatever I found at Michaels. I don’t use them a lot
I also have india inks and a few Liquitex Basic acrylic inks. I like the acrylic ones because they come with droppers and the india inks dont. But I’m really not experienced enough with using inks except to make drips down my pages.
Trashy/recycleables I save:
- different sizes of bottle caps to make circles
- small boxes I can unfold (like boxes that eye drops or ibuprofen comes in)
- the backs of packaging - the cardboard piece with the hole at the top that hangs on racks
- tags - gift tags, clothing tags, tags from tea, etc
- small bits of lace, ribbon, thread, yarn
- envelopes
- notebook fringe
Recommendations from other Lettuce Heads 
Per @AIMR
- tubes of water color paint, creamy like acrylics or use water for watercolor effect.
- watercolor pencils can be shaved to make your own magicals powders
Per @photojenn
- Neocolor II water soluble crayons
- Heat tool - you can also use a hair dryer but a heat tool will dry your pages without also blowing everything around on the table. I recently upgraded and it’s so much nicer!