Wanderlust – junk journal

The cover of a small journal, dark blue in colour with white stencilled texture paste over two-thirds of the cover.

Series: Wanderlust 2021 #05

This is the second bonus lesson from Kate Crane and this is the one that really let me make use of the backgrounds I’d made for a bonus lesson from Wanderlust 2019. Those backgrounds had been made with the idea that they would become the basis for journal pages, but I was never inspired to use them that way and they had started to annoy me. This was a fun way to make them useful and clear the space in the old journal.

This project is a simple little junk journal made from a single A4 sheet of card. At only 7.5cm × 10.5cm in size, it’s not too daunting a task to take on.

I started by cutting fourteen small panels from the stash of backgrounds, two from one background for the covers and twelve different ones for the pages. Then I went through my scraps box to find some smaller pieces to add to the pages.

With the papers in place I set about adding some decoration: a combination of stamping (using a few of my hand-carved stamps), rub-ons, and my favourite liquid chrome pen.

Then I selected a word for each page — without overthinking it — and added some shading around them. For a final touch, I splattered Indian ink on the backgrounds. All that was left to do then was to stitch the pieces together with some bookbinding thread.