Still Life with Mango - new journals to play with
As if I didn’t have enough to do, my mania with making things from recycled items around the house has taken on a new form over the last few weeks, mostly spurred by my need for some art journals (and taking an online workshop with the Raw Art Journaling book) and an attempt not to buy any more journals. I’ve taken a new look at my paper recycling bin!
I started out viewing a number of bookbinding videos, and decided I liked the look of the Coptic Stitch bound books I’d seen… so I grabbed some textured papers I’d found at at a thrift store recently and created this tall, thin journal, as a first and easy attempt with Coptic stitch:
First Journal, Coptic Stitch binding, textured cover paper and decorative inner papers
Side view of first coptic stitch bound journal
Inside view of some of the pages - some are white textured, some decorative patterned
Finally, I opened the first page and played with the polka dotted paper pattern and a white gel pen and did some zentangle-inspired connect-the-dots….
Sakura white gelly roll pen and first page (polka dotted paper)
The next week I watched an interesting series of videos on making a ‘Junk Journal‘ .. which really appealed to my recycling self… and pulled a bunch of office papers and my alumni magazine from college out of the paper recycling bin, plus a few decorative print papers. After cutting pages down to the size I decided to work with (10″ x 7″), I folded the papers in half and assembled a good 15-20 signatures of 4 folded papers each to stitch together. This time I used an actual honest to goodness bone folder, which did prove to be useful.
Bound junk journal and cover
Cover view of junk journal
I also made a cover out of a part of cereal box, a driving map of Switzerland, and a piece of blue textured card stock paper from the first project. I found that the way the coptic stitch binding lays flat doesn’t jive well with attaching the bound book portion to the cover well, so I’ve decided to just keep the cover on with a rubber band or ribbon for now.
I intend to gesso over many of the pages inside before applying paint or pen or other pieces of paper. So much fun to have a few new journals to play with!
inside view of junk journal unpainted
That’s a Certified Zentangle® Teacher… Last week I had the great honor to take part in the 7th CZT® certification seminar, and the first one to be held at the Hotel Providence, in Providence, Rhode Island. I met so many wonderful and talented people and learned so much, this poor cold-affected head is still spinning! We also had hosted the lovely Kit from Tasmania here at our home in VT for a few days before she flew home..
