Junk Journals

In my exploration of book forms, I ran across a movement called "Junk Journals" and decided to make one for myself.  (Actually, I will be making 9 of these since they are so much fun and I love the antique look!)

I think the definition of a junk journal is to use what you have, rather than go buy expensive pre-printed papers so I looked around and found a set of 9 small (4" x 6") hardback books I had collected almost 30 years go when I was into book collecting.  They have been collecting dust on my bookshelf since then so that's the set I started with.

I wanted to make something that looked and felt old so I decided to "tea dye" some papers.  I loved the way this process crinkled up the papers as they dried and gave some "heft" to my book. The papers I used were copy paper, newspaper, lined notebook paper, graph paper, brown paper bags, tags, dictionary pages, and papers I printed coupons on from JoAnn and Michaels that I never used.

Some of the pages, I further embellished by using stamp ink on the edges.  Others, I left alone.  

After ripping out the original pages from the small book, I reinforced the spine with masking tape and colored the edges with a marker to darken it so it blended in better.  I then made signatures from the papers I collected and dyed and went to the sewing machine to stitch all the signatures to the spine.

I just kept adding signatures until the book spine was full.  Then I covered the inside of the cover with some pages from the old book I had torn up.

All in all, I was very happy with the result!

Now, I'm looking in my bookshelves for more of these small, cute, hardcover books to alter into works of art.