really junky journals

Sometimes I feel a little snowed under with responsibilities, to do lists and other peoples needs and desires. My days are often a whirl of car trips to ballet or homeschool meetings or airport pickups for various family members. Then theres meals, washing to dry before the fire due to the wet weather, visits from daughters, babies and boyfriends and a huge plethora of other random happenings that occur when theres a large family living in close proximity.
Lately, I've also been trying to create more hand made repurposed books for a market stall I'm aiming to have in spring as well as some classes for journal making and SoulCollage®. Although I'm a licensed SoulCollage® facilitator, having trained in Melbourne last year, I've yet to be brave enough to give a class. With little quiet time to get my thoughts sorted enough to plan them out, all of these things have taken a backseat and I've been struggling just to get basic household jobs done……like feeding everyone a healthy meal on time or changing their sheets.

For me, creating something is almost as necessary as breathing. When I don't have the time to think, plan and move forward on my myriad ideas and dreams, I tend to fall in a very messy heap, so I've learned to go with my strong creative drive and just Do It! With a very stressful and busy week behind me last week, and nothing achieved on all the items that I had planned to do, I just needed to create SOMETHING!! Something that would lull my logical left brain into a state of somnolence, yet feed my creative right brain with hearty, arty fodder! These messy junk journals were just right!    

I had started these about 6 months ago but they were put aside while life moved along at its usual fast pace. The green one was created first, from something I saw online, probably someones blog. I tend to do that, just see something and think I can make that, and then try it! So I made the green one and almost finished it back then but really wanted to know how to Make Them Properly! Last weekend, after following a rabbit trail, I found Mary Ann Moss from Dispatch from LA blog and her Remains of the Day Journal class. She is the funniest thing and writes hilariously as well as sketches beautifully. And oh yes, she rounded off my attempts very nicely and the lovely pink journal came into being! 

Both of them are made almost entirely from random bits of leftovers. There are quite a few heavy weight, brown shopping bags in there and a lovely scrunchy bag that came all the way from Bolivia with organic quinoa! Theres old book pages, pages from an old music book, an antiques magazine and an old poetry book. An out of date atlas, some pages from Frankie magazine and lots of lovely envelopes with windows to peep through, as well as offcuts from the repurposed books I make. The covers are VitaBrits boxes for stiffness and some of the many, many thrifted fabrics, fabric offcuts and doilies that I have in my stash! My sewing machine was put to a different use, sewing up paper scraps and it was certainly lovely to be quite haphazard about placement and hanging threads! 

Some embellishments with my hand carved stamps, a new to me bookbinding technique, a length of fabric for a closure and they were done. One each to my two oldest girls. Which means of course that I now must create two more for the younger two…..and then theres a daughter in law or two…..and a few friends…..and what about me???

Yes, all the frenzied creating was just what I needed. My tiny loft bedroom/studio is now covered with lots of threads and snippety bits of fabric and paper but my heart is satisfied. All the other items on my to do list are still there too. Waiting. And thats ok. They can wait a little longer. My busy brain had a little rest and my spirit has been replenished. For now.


I've joined in with Nicole at Frontier Dreams today. She has a great link up to all sorts of creative crafting called Keep Calm Craft On….which I thought was rather apt for my post today!!

And I've also shared this with Linda at Natural Suburbia on her Creative Friday post. She has some of the cutest knitting patterns over there too - do have a look!