I do miss adding my artwork on here. There are a lot of things that I have let go over the years, a couple different computers, moved a few times, gotten my teaching license, a couple different husbands and a bunch more. Have you ever stopped and thought; why am I not doing this or that any longer? Especially if I really enjoyed the activity. Some of the activities have gone away because I just can't do them any longer. I can't sleep in a tent, or hike or even walk very far because I need a new knee. Other activities have gone to the backburner of stuff I liked to do and might want to do sometime. Much of the time I do have is spent recuperating from my teaching job. It takes so much out of a person to be a good teacher. Most nights after work I just have enough energy to eat dinner with my husband and read. Bedtime during the week is early and so it does not leave much time for anything that takes too much time. I do sometimes work on a bit of a collage in a junk journal, but nothing too much. But hey! Summer is almost here and that means I have a great deal of time off.
Some of the art I have been doing for the last few years is junk journaling. If you might not know what this type of art is let me explain.
Collect a lot of what most people would through out or call ephemera. The stuff to be thrown out is usually clean bits of paper, or broken earrings, etc. Ephemera is old or new postcards, photos, paper, stickers and so on. After collecting some of this material either use a regular writing journal, create a journal out of old books, journals, or different types of materials. A word of warning! Once you get started collecting your material can get out of control. However, if you organize your stash, it should be somewhat controllable. Once you have some material and a journal then it is time to create. Oh, you will need glue, scissors and all that type of stuff. Pick a page and start tearing, cutting, gluing, and so on until you have a finished page. Yes, it takes a bit more than this to get a page spread that is appealing. Check out YouTube for different creators on Junk Journaling. I also use these methods in my travel and life journals. It is a fun way to add a bit of pizazz to a journal. One more bit, as your are traveling take a travel kit of scissors, glue, pens, markers, etc., and collect the ephemera of your travels. Add in photos when you get back home. Collect postcards, restaurant, museum and other attraction receipts for gluing into your journal. Write about your day. Put in the good the bad and even the ugly. In the future when you revisit this journal your entries will bring back more memories than if you had only just photos to look at. Once again check out YouTube for videos on travel journals. Most importantly, Have Fun with it!
Here are some details about the photos in this post:
I used the mailing envelope for these books. With the larger junk journal the envelope was used to cover an old composition book that I had created for another art project. That project never went further than a few pages. This journal was then used during Junk Journal January of this year. It was a fun project to work on at the beginning of the year. It took a lot of my scraps and such to do the daily prompts for the challenge. For more information check out Junk Journal January and/or July on YouTube for ideas and prompts.
