New Year's resolution - more mixed-media art journal pages

I love mixed media art journals. I love the idea of being able to create something like this, from ArtGirlCreation78.

Though I'm pretty confident in creating collages, I'm not so good at using other mediums in my art. I love the idea of using paint and adding color to things, but it takes me a long time to:

• work up the courage to begin a project that includes paints
• set aside a large block of time to devote to using paints
• make decisions while I'm creating, which causes me to stress

Since I believe that it's practice that I need above all, I need to resolve to generally do more art that involves paint. I mostly enjoy my results. Here are a few pages that I did last year.

Yes, I'm happy with them. The problem is that they took hours to make, and I agonized over every decision. It wasn't a pleasant experience for me. The process reminds me of how I used to be with collage art, and how it used to take me forever to make a piece and I didn't enjoy the process at all. I got better with practice, so I have to practice with using paints too.

I still have plenty more pages in this little junkmail booklet. I'm going to make it a personal goal to make another of these pages in January.

Do you have a fear of using paints? What do you do or what would you like to do with them?