Start Something New – Weekend Journal Making

Hi Friends!

Hope you are all doing well, we have another lovely sunny day today and apparently it will be a top of 21C (70F) which does sound a little unseasonal for April but we will see.  It’s off to a good start with lots of sunshine and blue skies so perhaps the forecast is right for a change!  It’s a great day for getting all your washing done and hung up to dry outside!  In Scotland especially, as soon as the sun is out people rush to get their washing done and out to dry in the sun!  Is it the same where you live or do you all like to use driers?

Today’s art . . .

Today’s art is this journal that I made at the weekend. This is of course, another entry for Erika’s theme of Spring Birds on Art Journal Journey.   The little birds on the cover of my journal are all foiled which you can’t tell from the photo but every photo I took had the birds looking a different colour as the light reflected on the foil.  The one in the middle looks blue in this this photo but it’s just reflecting whatever was nearby.  I had another photo where all three of them looked orange.

I’ve been going through all my old paper pads and junk mail and turning them into something useful instead of them just being something that takes up space on a shelf gathering dust!  For someone who has never been a scrapbooker, I do seem to have quite a lot of 12 x 12 paper.  I do love paper but sometimes it feels too nice to use, especially if you can’t get more of it! I thought 2011 was going to be the oldest paper I had in my stash but look – I found some from 2005! 

Twenty year old paper just stored on a shelf doing nothing useful.  Well now it has a purpose!  I also have a few full pads of Tim Holtz paper, that is now so old that he has reissued it again this year – how funny is that?  Apparently people have been asking for it for years since it’s been long retired, and I still have loads of it in my stash.  Don’t need the new stuff, still got the old stuff Tim!  Of course the reason I still have the old stuff is because I was saving it because I couldn’t get any more, but it needs to be used and I need to stop hoarding paper.  The new version btw is a limited edition and won’t be restocked once it sells out, so if you really want some better be quick!

So anyway, back to my journal… I made this journal as a concertina or accordion journal.  I like using this type of journal especially for junk journalling where your pages can get bulky.  These don’t have a spine so they can expand without problems.  However, using the scrapbook paper in this way was a little wasteful so I may not make more like this with this type of paper. It did allow me to hide some of the papers I didn’t like so much as the others and it made the pages really thick and sturdy.

As you can see it meets with the Journal Inspector’s approval lol  She takes her job very seriously, testing the corners for strength and stability.  🙂

Here’s a quick look at some of the other journals I made at the weekend.  There is another concertina journal on the top, made with bee-themed paper, but all the others are more like folio journals. My plan is to make as many as possible so they are ready to work in, and I will have plenty to choose from and a lot less hoarded un-used paper!

Let me know what you think in the comments below.   As always, thanks for reading and happy journalling!Ingredients

scrapbook paper, gel prints, glue, elastic, eyelets, paper scraps, other ephemera, spattery paint

Challenges

Art Journal Journey – Spring Birds