My First Mini Junk-Plus Journal (Long Post)

 I don't remember which artist/teacher I learned about a mini junk journal from, as I have learned from so many generous teachers in all sorts of ways, it's hard to keep track. I've been working on this one, off and on, for over a year.

It's called a junk journal, and is meant to use up scraps, junk mail, and other stuff we usually throw away, just for fun. This one does have a lot of that in it, but it also has a lot of sentimental, to me, pieces, which I would never throw away, such as the tiny bird painting and card from a fellow artist/doll lover that has become a dear friend through Facebook. There's also some of my original art work, an original "inchie" with a picture of my original carved clown stamp, and numerous other keepsakes. So, it has been fun to make, but it is also priceless to me, and a keeper!

It is about 4" x 5" big and has one signature of various papers. I made it very simple, with only two holes punched all the way through the cover and a cord (later changed to a strong shoelace) run through the center of the signature and out through the spine, which ties and holds the journal closed.

I should have made the spine wider, but I didn't think about it growing this much as I added stuff to it! Ha!

The cover is cardboard cut from a postal package box that something came in, held together with zebra colored duck tape, and I did a bit of stenciling on it and added some washi tape

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Page 1-2: Different tapes, text, Lil Caesar's pizza napkin, an original abstract painting of mine, and other stuff that I would ordinarily throw away.

Pages 3-4: An original sketch, a yarn bow, some text, a page that I marbleized with shaving cream a few years ago, a sticker from one of our favorite coffee shops, the Dragonfly, etc.

Pages 5-6: Some stamping, a bit of doodling, collage bits from junk mail, a clothing tag, etc.

Pages 7-8: An elephant stamped on cotton, a bit of paisley cotton with text saying "You are Gorgeous", attached by cotton thread, and the flap lifts up to reveal another page underneath, one of my favorite poems, the flowers are a napkin, which I tried a new technique on, held on to the texted page with a spiral paper clip, etc.

Pages 9-10: A pink and gold thank you card cover held to a page for journaling by the spiral paperclip, with an angel and number collaged on it, a page of typewriter letters that I printed off and collaged a bird made from punched out circles on, a flap with printed dominoes and scottie dog duck tape, which also opens up for a bit of journaling, etc.

Pages 11-12: Duck taped edge with an inspirational text cutout collaged on, a prescription envelope with a stamped rabbit collaged on, which forms a pocket to keep things, like a pretty fragrance card, which can be journaled on the back, that I liked, etc.

Pages 13-14: Envelope pocket, strip of paper ribbon, stamp, sticker, part of a card (junk mail) glued to text page, which opens up for writing on one side (a print of my original sketch on the other), etc.

Pages 15-16: A band cut from a scrapbooking paper cover glued to the page at both ends to hold small papers, quotes, etc., a blank thank you card with a cutout from a greeting card collaged on, and a lace edging, etc.

Pages 17-18: A print of an original sketch, a translucent work, stamp, two tickets to a movie on a trip from many years ago, a sheep cutout collaged onto the page with a fabric pocket stapled on, a fake ticket stub, words from a Splenda packet, a handmade paper button, etc.

Pages 19-20: Watercolored text page for writing or collaging, Mini marblized with shaving cream page, transparency from a candle jar given to me by a friend and glued to the green tissue page, etc.

Pages 21-22: Text page, an Asian stamp, cutout from a tea box, fake ticket stub, scrapbook paper corner pocket, machine stitched paper, bit of lace, thank you card with scrapbook paper fold down, cheetah duck tape, fabric tab lifts it up for writing, etc.

Pages 23-24: Scrapbook paper hiding inside of card, cheeta duck tape, washi tape, stamped cutout, handwritten thank you message and a hand painted mini canvas from a dear friend, scrapbook paper corner pocket glued in, etc.

Opens up to reveal a favorite photo of me and more journaling space...

Pages 25-26: back of card with rest of message, pocket cut from scrapbook card, bookmark stamped with ribbon tie that says Girlfriends Matter, stamped quote, cut out translucent quote, printed photo of my two great-aunts, a band to hold stuff, ribbon, and a newsprint fabric tab, etc.

Pages 27-28: An original watercolor with text scrapbook paper, a mini text page, marbleized with shaving cream, with a quote on a fabric band stapled to the page, various ephemera, etc.

Pages 29-30: Mini and full text pages, marbleized, hidden paperclip on side edge

Pages 31-32: Text page with inspirational words cut from somewhere, a hand sketched and watercolored leaf inspired by our tulip tree-they remind me of little kimonos when turned upside down, etc.

Pages 33-34: Thank you card front with a smaller note card glued to it, which opens up to a small collage and a place to write, a small handmade brown envelope pocket holding a quote card, with three handmade paper buttons down the front, text page with a print of my original sketch, words, another button, a stamp, etc.,

Pages 35-36: A text page, the other end of the RX bag, which forms a pocket holding a black card with collage and writing space, collage bird/flowers, a scrapbook paper bookmark with a newspaper print fabric tab, an original "inchie" with my original hand carved stamp printed off in miniature and applied, etc.

Pages 37-38: Back of envelope pocket page, red ink and threads, a bit of screen wire found on my table, a label from a meringue cookie box, a bit of newspaper text fabric, writing or doodling space, etc.

Pages 39-40: Pages of printed off typewriter letters and text marbleized ready to be added to

Pages 41-42: Text page to be added to, original monoprint (gelli print) on sheet music, paper tape, etc.

Pages 43-44: Found phrase on sheet music page, ledger page with ink feather and writing/doodling space, etc.

Pages 45-46: Ledge page for writing/doodling, fabric pocket stamped and holding a bookmark with fabric tab and an empty tea bag-The page is also glued to the next page to form another pocket and has a stamped tab with a fabric tab, etc.

Pages 47-48: Front of a tea box glued to back of text page pocket, empty tea bag pouch, empty tea bag with stamped cutout, tea bag tag, washi tape, doodling on green tissue page

Pages 49-50: Scrapbook paper page can be added to, small envelope, covered in napkin and paper doily with handmade button, holds a stamped card to be written/doodled in-staples holding the torn envelope flap together, etc.

 

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I added etc to the end of all of them, because there are tiny embellishments and stuff that I may have missed as I was typing the descriptions, and I deliberately left some pages for future journaling. I'm calling it done for now, but I can always go back and do more writing, doodling, collaging, or adding to, if I want to. It looks much better, and is more fun, in reality than it does here, but you get the idea.

It's very much fun to have it laying handy to add bits and pieces to when you have a few minutes or as a warm up to your other creative play, and it's great to flip through and have your memory jogged.

I plan on starting another one after the holidays, when I get my days sorted back out, and maybe this time I'll remember to make the spine wider to hold all the "stuff" I add to the pages, although I kind of like that it turned into a "chunky journal". 

As I said, this little book holds some junk and a lot of memories, so it's a keeper!

Fun stuff! 

Hidden Paper Clips, Journal Spread, and Empty Teabags

 This is the results of the last few days of dabbling with my creative stuff, minus a couple of sketches that I'll share in another post. At least I'm trying! 😀 

I covered two more large paper clips and one in a different way and added some collage pieces and words. They actually look better than they're showing up here. One has a navy blue ribbon,  one a fabric tie, and the "nest" on the one on the right is actually red, not black. I used a dangle earring on the one on the left for the time being, until I can get a beaded dangle on it (I'll have to unearth my beads first). I'm going to use at least one of these in my mini junk journal, and I want to make some more! That's a food sticker under the clips. I can't resist saving them!

This is another spread in my little junk journal. The page under the paper clip is the front of a thank you card from our nephew and his wife. It has metallic gold speckles in opposing corners on a pink background, and this cute little stamped girl fit right over the words. The back is blank for writing, and the page under it is a text page with marbling. I may tweak it a bit at some point. The page on the right is a page of typewriter letters printed on pink cardstock with another strip hinged to it with dotted duck tape. Except for the collaged flowers it is also blank for writing. I saw the bird idea somewhere and was inspired to make one out of large and small round paper punches and scrapbook paper. When the hinged part is closed the bird's head sticks out. I like it!

Here is a box of used and emptied teabags that I learned a valuable lesson on. I have been drying and saving used teabags for a long time. However, I thought they would be ok until I could get around to emptying them, and I had a LOT of them in a bag, some in a ziplock bag. 

The other night I decided to empty them. Some of them emptied without a problem, but some of the herbal teas, especially orange & spice and peach tea, had kind of dissolved together and wouldn't come out without tearing the bags, plus they had tiny holes where bugs had been eating. The ones in the ziplock bag had molded from condensation. I emptied this box full, probably a hundred at least, until I got tired of picking through them and trying to untangle the tag and strings (I had to tear them off most of the bags), so I put these in this box, which is more than I'll probably use, and tossed the rest. 

Moral of this story: Let the teabags dry completely, then empty them BEFORE you store them! I left most of these in tack (folded), but many of them will be flattened out to use. There are so many great ideas for them on youtube, and I will dry some more of the orange & spice and peach teabags, because they make pretty pinkish colors when dry, but I will empty them before I store them next time!

Anyway, just sharing some fun stuff I've been playing with the last few days! Today, I played with some beeswax crayons in my sketchbook. Found them when I was looking for something else. Had completely forgotten about them! I've also been wanting to do some more meditative stitching. I found one I had started a while back, so it may show up on here soon! But that's another post...

Thanks for visiting! Hope you enjoyed it!

More Velvet Ribbon Bookmark Beginnings!

Twenty more bookmarks cut, crimped, and ready to embellish! Sunday afternoon relaxation! 😀 It may be a few days, because I have several other completely unrelated projects going at the same time! 😁

Velvet Ribbons Galore! And Bookmarks too!

A few years ago, I took the Vintage Jewelry (by Andrea Singarella) course on Jeanne Oliver's site www.jeanneoliver.com about using old vintage jewelry to make new jewelry. I learned a lot about using the tools, wire, beads, etc to make necklaces and earrings, but she also shared how to make really pretty bookmarks out of ribbons and trims. I especially loved the velvet ones, so the next time I went to Walmart I bought a package of eight ribbon ends and brought them home, excited to get started, but the size ends I bought were one inch and all of my ribbons, none of them velvet, were either smaller or larger than one inch, so I put the ends away for the time being, and looked for one inch velvet ribbons everywhere I went, but no luck. 

Time passed, but I never forgot about the dusty pink velvet bookmark with the vintage jewelry that caught my attention to start with. Well, last week, I found a lot of ten one yard pieces of velvet ribbons for sale, and they were ONE INCH! They only had one bag left, so I ordered it right away. AND it included a dusty pink one! 

It arrived this week, and these are the colors, all of which I love! One yard of each color will yield three ten and a half inch bookmarks, with a short piece left over, if I choose to use them that way. I'm thinking I can also use them in the fabric books that I have in progress, and also on the stitch meditations that I will be making again soon, so it's all good. 

The white bow with gold deer heads on it is from a country ham gifted to us by our neighbor for Christmas this past year, and my mom crocheted the large doily and gave it to me.

So, I have made four bookmarks, because that's all the ends I have at present. I will be ordering more! The black one is actually burgundy in color. The dusty pink one is still my favorite!

Because I was lazy about hunting up my old jewelry stuff last night, I used what was handy to me to practice with, which was silver charms, a new embellishment circle, and some of my fabric and wire wrapped beads. Not sure I really like the cotton fabric beads with the velvet, so I may change them when I uncover my vintage jewelry, but for now this is how they are. I think they'll make nice little "thank you" gifts or stocking stuffers!

Maybe my muse is beginning to wake up by making these in my chair in front of the TV. Looking forward to making more! 

Current Bulletin/Inspiration Board

 So, I bought one of the perforated metal bulletin boards, which allows me to use thumb tacks or magnets, either, or both! I love it! However, I bought it and stood it on a table easel to use for making photos of my creative stuff, and it has quickly turned into an inspiration/bulletin board, which is not a bad thing, but it defeats the purpose I intended it for. 

Currently, to inspire me, it has a Blessed magnet, a photo of our beloved little dog, Kibbles, whom we lost in 1997 and still miss every day, a bookmark about writers and words (I love the swirl and swing of words, as they tangle with human emotions"), given to me by a dear friend, who enjoys my writing, a printout of journal pages, also the header photo for this blog, with cat stamps on it (love these stamps!), a printout of some practice portraits with charcoal, stabilo pencil, and water, from a free class called Petit Portraits, a sticky note about changing your life by changing one thing that you do every day, a printout of a journal page painting where you pull the images out, from a class called She Tribe, picture of old timey peonies (I love peonies, especially white ones!), a page torn from an old almanac, a page of little Christmas stickers torn out of some book, because I love some of the little characters on it, and a black and white card with a touching inside note sent from the same dear friend. Oh yeah, extra magnets and thumbtacks, two of which have clips for holding other stuff! 

The longer it sits there, the more stuff will accumulate on it. I took down a lot of stuff when I moved from the old cork board to this one. Inspiration boards are good. Sometimes, they inspire you in ways you wouldn't have thought of otherwise!

Art Journal Collage Using Gelli Prints- "To Be Brave"

I've been seeing some amazing collages made by artists using their gelli plate prints, so I thought I would try one! Mine isn't amazing, but it was fun to do, fed my soul, made me happy, and I like it. 😊

The base gelli print was a page in my journal where I had cleaned off my roller and my plate and added the gold buttons, using a handmade stamp. I liked it as it was, but decided to develop it further into a mixed-media collage. The long white/pinkish strip on the left is another gelli print that I had intended to turn into a bookmark, but since I had sort of sketch/painted a tailless bird on one end, and the colors seemed to work with the journal page, I glued it down with matte gel medium.

I added some stars and a large circle that I had punched out for a previous project. I outlined all with a charcoal pencil. The large circle needed something, so I used one of my downsized original monotypes, from a previous jewelry project, to break it up, and outlined it with the charcoal pencil. I added the pink/gold washi tape to kind of break things up, and glued a piece of text down, but it still needed something under the bird.

I happened to have a white duck feather that I had previously used on a couple of gelli prints to pick up paint from the plate laying on my desk. It also happened to be blue! So I cut off the end and glued it to the bird, giving him a tail, and finished painting the bird. I also gave him a posca marker branch to sit on. I gave the whole page some charcoal scribbles and bits of paint and called it done!

Mixed-media journal paper, mixed-media, including, Golden open media acrylics, handmade button stamp, gelli prints, a printed duck feather, posca marker, charcoal pencil, punched out circles and stars from painted papers, text, gold metallic acrylic paint, washi tape, palette knife to paint bird body/head, and probably something else that I forgot. Since my work space is in total disarray, and my space to work is about the size of my 5"x 7" gelli plate and sketchbook, I used whatever was handy, but I'm thinking it turned out ok.

Can't wait to try a collage painting using my gelli prints, but I may try a couple more of these before I attempt that. I also need to get back to my classes that I started last year, but maybe I will and maybe I won't. Sometimes, I just need to do my own thing! 😊

Stay creative and happy!

Jan 17 Gelli Prints

I am in somewhat of a creative slump at the moment. My workspace is in more disarray than usual as I'm trying to clean and organize it, and it's a slow process, because I have so much crammed into such a small space. I barely have room to turn around, a tiny space on my table to work in, can't find anything I want to work with, and it's very frustrating. It will, however, work out at some point!

I did a little de-cluttering in the spare bedroom this week and I did a little gelli printing today with my 5" x 7" plate, open media acrylics, speedball printmaking paper, and some end pieces cut from other prints. The prints are all one layer monoprints and some of the bookmarks have two layers. I used a palette knife to apply the paint this time.
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These bookmark beginnings actually came at the end of the session. Some were used to clean off the plate, and some were printed from paint added to the plate. They are printed on both sides, but I forgot to take pictures of the backs. I will show both sides after embellishments and writing/text is added.

Sorry these look a bit fuzzy. I am having eye problems, and some days I see better than others. The last print is on a sheet of regular printer paper, and was used to clean the plate.

Dental appointment tomorrow. NOT looking forward to it! I do, however, look forward to my next paint slinging appointment. :)

Have an awesomely creative week!