Art Journaling: with food packaging [for Rubbish Week]

Hi, hi.

It's day 3 of 'Rubbish Week' ... and it's getting even more rubbish ... in a good way ...

My final prompt  for the UKScrappers Art Journey [a kind of introduction to art journaling] is available to download from today and is based around the theme of recycling 'rubbish' into your journals.

[If you'd like to read the full prompt / general discussion then visit the Art Journey area of the forum here and go to 'Step 23'].

Here's one of the two new pages I made to illustrate my prompt ... now, without cheating, without scrolling down for the answers on the next image [I'll know if you have] ... see if you can you spot the 'rubbish':

[BTW: whoever just mumbled 'the whole page is rubbish' can go and stand outside the room and not return until they've thought hard about they just said.] Moving on ...

OK here's the answers:

 Any surprises? Anything familiar to you and your work?

In case you need proof ... I took a 'before' photo of the food packaging:  

I love everything about that packaging: the patterned lettering, the fonts used ... and the stew inside it!

Now here are those letters once again - rearranged into my page title:

The 'dream, plan, budget, build' word strip was cut from a junk mail leaflet about home-building that was addressed to the previous owners of our house despite them not living here for years ... see? I really do scour just about everything to find a useful snippet or two!

And here are those stickers again - which actually inspired the 'new ideas' theme of the page:

Using the leftover surrounds from a sheet of label-stickers has been one of my favourite additions to projects for a while now. And I can't think of a recent scrapbook page where I haven't used some!

I don't know what it is I like about them ... but I'm quite addicted. I'm probably just being perverse and contrary by preferring the support-act rather than the main-headliner!

It's also had a similar fondness for using sheets of alphabets like I've done here, not for their individual letters, but for a mass effect:

Finally here's a closer look at the little scrap of vintage dictionary I used to balance out the use, and colour, of the alphabet sheet:

It also felt appropriate to use definitions of words such as 'precognition' and  'preconceive' on a page about having ideas!

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Tomorrow I have a full step-by-step showing the making of another new page ... from start to finish.

I had lots of great feedback after the first one I blogged, last summer, and it's been my most 'pinned' project on Pinterest, so I'm hoping some of you will find this one useful too.

So I'll be back with that in 24 hours. See you then.

Julie :-)

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Don't forget the special discount over in my shop this week - just click the image to go for a browse:

• There's a couple of new Plundered Pages packs in stock there - some of which are perfect for scrapbooking summer photos;
• and there's the new Plundered Pages 'Serendipity Packs' too - lucky-dip value packets of vintage papers [which, with the 20% discount now come to just £3.20!]

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 :-)