Art Journaling: Recycled, homemade journal [for Rubbish Week]

Hi, hi, hi.

I'm having a rubbish week.

No ... let me clarify that ... my week's going fine [apart from almost stepping on a decapitated baby bird before breakfast] no ...

... what I'm actually having is a 'Rubbish Week': a week of posts, tutorials, ideas, projects etc all on the theme of recycling 'rubbish' into your creativity.

Not that I think of it as rubbish. No, to me it's 'found treasure', 'free stash', 'a serendipitous starting point' ... and I love it! I think it panders to the part of my nature that looks for the good in things, roots for the underdog, keeps an open mind, gives things a second chance ...

But, whatever it is, it's going to be right here, on my blog, all this week. Starting with an art journal I made for myself from the contents of an Amazon parcel ...

The fact that the paper was actually perforated at regular intervals and that, when folded in half, the sheets looked perfectly page sized was certainly a sign that I had to turn it into a book!

All be it a fairly ramshackle book:

It's two years since I made this journal and I still haven't decorated the cover. It's still the plain chipboard ... but I think I like it like that. I might - add some wording or a title on it to liven it up a little,  eventually, at some point, maybe ...

I decided early on to incorporate into this particular journal all of those bits and pieces :

• which I hang on to for safe-keeping or because they're pretty, or weird or pretty weird;
• bits and pieces which I pin to my notice boards or clip-up above my work desk ... and which stay there indefinitely ;
• bits and pieces which I think 'I could use that' or 'that's too nice to throw away' ...you know the kind of thing ...

And so, occasionally I take them down, unpin them, tip them out ... and glue them in place, safely inside my journal. It's like a little scrap resting place.

Take the first page of the book for example:

It features part of a paint colour strip, a practise photo from my PoGo printer, some old alpha-stickers plus a doodle of a bird and some nuggets of wisdom saved from a daily quotation calendar:

It's really something I should do more often otherwise it's a bit pointless of me to keep all these things 'for later' ... if 'later' never comes! And I think I might start a new journal, maybe more of a 'smash' / old fashioned scrapbook style to speed up the process and get rid of the backlog!

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I'll be back tomorrow with some scrappy, collagey, bits + pieces-y style cards but I'll leave you for now with a special offer to mark 'Rubbish Week':

 

SORRY - BUT THIS OFFER CLOSED IN JUNE 20I2

The shop is built on the philosophy of discovering hidden gems within materials which have been overlooked ... so, if you're as inspired by found treasures as much as I am then take advantage of the discount all this week!

Julie :-)