Junk Journal (cont.)

So, a few days ago, I posted about finding instructions on YouTube through Enjoy The Ride's post on how to make a Junk Journal. Well, after spending several days collecting the materials for it (although I could not find good ribbon or stamp pads anywhere without driving to a craft store), I finally put it together. On the right, you can see the materials I gathered together before starting. Unfortunately, since I couldn't get to a craft store, I didn't have any extra scrapbooking paper to spare, nor did I have ink pads. And I was forced to make do with gold, silver and black gift wrapping ribbon. Which actually doesn't look too bad.

So I sat down and put it together all in one afternoon. I think the whole process ended up taking me about an hour. I did end up crinkling all of the pages and have ordered several colors of stamp pads via the internet for future inking of the pages. I also cut the A-Z dividers into smaller sizes, for easy gluing.

Unfortunately, the YouTube video recommends putting a divider every 8-10 pages, which I thought to mean actual sheets of paper instead of 8-10 sides of a page. So the A, B, and C all have 8 sheets of paper in between, and I had to put X, Y and Z all on the same page because I ran out of room. Most of the other letters have about 2-4 sheets associated with each one.

I also found some pretty cool paper clips at Staples, which I randomly clipped to pages for future use. I'm trying to figure out, if I want to change out the ribbons at some future time, when I can get nice cloth ones, or if I like the way it looks right now. All in all, I'm rather satisfied with how it turned out. I glued my Alice in Wonderland movie stubs in already.

Junk Journal

I have been passing an enjoyable day, waiting for DH to get home, perusing other people's crafting blogs. Sometimes they're a bit tricky to find, but I stumbled across a few great ones. I particularly enjoyed Enjoy the Ride's entry on junk journals. Which made me think. My first thought was, that's an awesome use for those ticket stubs, dove saying, fortune cookie slips, etc. that I hang onto with the intent of putting them into a scrapbook, but then losing, or not finding the right place for them, etc. So, I will be creating one of my own. My second thought was, I did something sort of like this, when DH and I first started going out. I kept everything, movie stubs, chocolate tops, even candy wrappers, from the times we'd shared together and made this hodge podge scrapbook that I nevertheless love looking through because it brings back so many happy memories. I thought I'd share a few pictures with you.

This was during my semester in Ireland, my first day of classes and my birthday both fell on Valentines Day, major homesick moment. Anyway, I kept all the letters, cards, everything that reminded me of him, or that he sent me while I was there.

I found some cool stickers with the months (now out of print, apparently) and just glued them down even when I didn't have any specific pictures to go with that month except a few words or ticket stubs. The whole Anna does..., DH does... continues into May.

I also divided the album up by seasons, as well as months. I used stickers, pictures, and any "junk" like ticket stubs I had laying around to tell a story of our first few years together. Maybe some day this will be a great thing to pull out for the kids.

A bit more traditional scrapbooking, but again I added random words and any stickers and embellishments that seemed to fit the mood or story.

I even kept airplane ticket stubs, tags from purchases and candy wrappers. I took a picture of the quilt I bought in Frankenmuth, printed out a map from World of Warcraft, and added interesting shapes to the background to bring certain elements together.