Feel Good Wrap Around Junk Journal

Hi Everyone and thank you for joining me today, the first of the month. And may I welcome those of you who have started following my blog just recently. I really do appreciate you joining me on this creative journey.

This is a scheduled post as I shall be in the lovely little town of Ballyvaughn, on the West Coast of Ireland and totally immersed in my concertina and Irish music!  But as always the first of the month is the prompt for our Mini Album Makers challenge. We love seeing all your wonderful albums ..... there is no theme, just post whatever album you have finished during the month.

So what do I have for you this month ...... well I decided over the New Year to sort all my old patterned papers and cardstock into colour batches and so I have grabbed the green bag and have made a wopper of a junk journal using up loads of bits and pieces and Eileen Hull's fabulous Wrap Journal Die. It really is a FEEL GOOD journal as my green bag is now nearly empty !!!!

See what I mean about being a wopper!

Not only have I used up all the green papers but also lots of mop up tags and bits and pieces.

No piece of paper was too small!

Even the front cover was decorated with an alcohol ink piece made about five years ago! And I have tried a new type of closure for this journal die too.

And so for a tutorial ..... it is very long so do bear with me!

I started with the green bag and took out as many of the pieces as possible which seemed to fit together in terms of hues and patterns.

I then attacked my "bits" box and found some co-ordinating pieces which seemed to match the green papers. This gave me a little kit to work with.

I started cutting some of the larger pieces of patterned paper 4 3/4" x 6 1/2" and folding/scoring them at 3 1/4". Little books started to come together. I used some plain papers as well - cream and tea dyed papers. Once the books started taking shape I fitted in smaller pieces inside.

Fourteen signatures in all !

I then sewed the individual signatures, piercing five holes and sewing them together. There is a very useful video HERE : Lemon Tree DIY Kettle Stitch Bookbinding. I have used this for the last few months for all my sewn signatures and find it works well.

The finished signatures bound on the spine look like this .....

...... and the inside looks like this!

And so to the cover. I cut the wrapped journal from matt board and then covered it in pieces with brown kraft cardstock. My patterned papers were a little small so I needed something to act as a background.

I am trying a different type of closure with this journal and punched two holes in the "wrap flap" !

Two pieces of ribbon were threaded through from the reverse side and stuck down with tape.

I was then able to cover this up with more Kraft cardstock.

Time to stick the signatures into the book. They are a bit heavy so I have used LoADS of tape!!!

The only problem with tape is that you don't get any "wriggle room" when you set it down onto the covers. It's a little lower than I would like but it worked ok.

I then used some left over papers to decorate the inside - in places it is just pieces! The lighter green strip on the right hand side is a small pocket.

Now everything was stuck down I was able to punch two holes in the front cover so the ribbons could be threaded through.

Once I knew where these were going to lie I could then decorate the front cover.

Well ...... thank you and well done if you are still here! I hope this gives you some ideas for using up lots of scrap paper and make a really feel good junk journal ! And why not join us in our challenge this month and you may win a prize from our sponsor - this month Stencil Girl Products. Do hop on over to Mini Album Makers to see what the rest of the team have been creating and for more details of the challenge.

Have a great crafting month!

Jennie x