I'm making a Christmas junk journal - part one, the cover and gathering papers

I have quite a lot of Christmas stuff in my paper and ephemera stashes that I have acquired over a few years, so I thought I'd make myself a Christmas junk journal to use some of this up. As with my first junk journal, I've used a Cadbury's fingers box for the cover. 

I've painted over the front of the cover with some red acrylic paint. It's not hidden the images on the front but it just adds a richer backing under the tissue paper that I've used on top. I used mod podge to stick the tissue paper down and added a coat over the top to give a glossy finish. I love the texture that the tissue paper (and the napkin I've used on the inside) makes rather than for it to be smoothed down completely flat (plus that would incur a lot of faffing about!). I used the top layer of a napkin and repeated the same process as the front for the inside cover.

So far I've decorated the front with a tag and a couple of wooden embellishments. I've used embossing powder on the Christmas decoration wooden embellishment and on the tag. I will be adding other stuff to the front when I come across something I want to use. 

I've gathered together some old Christmas cards, Christmas scrapbook papers, pages out of catalogues and some envelopes and bags to use the pages on the inside. The next job will be to create the signatures and to attach these to the cover.

I hope you're having a good weekend and I'll be back on Tuesday.

TTFN
Louise

A little bit of paper play

This sympathy card was for an order. The image is from a vintage greetings card, probably 1930/40s that I decorated with some straight stitch. I also used purple card and flower patterned paper,

As I had my paper crafting stuff out I decided to do a couple of tags to pop into penpal letters this month. I used a mixture of scrapbook paper scraps, some pieces of ephemeral from my stash and soft purple glitter tape. 

I'll be back on Wednesday.

TTFN
Louise

It started with some flamingos...

While I was on my couple of days off I did another page in my junk journal. This one started with a set of stickers with flamingos and pineapples that I was sent by one of my American penpals (they're from the Reflections range by Michaels and the USA).

Originally, I was aiming for a 1950s-style Miami theme, but I didn't have what I needed in my stash nor could I find it on Pinterest, so I decided to do this collage of four different, but linked, images instead. The design on the background of the flamingos on their tropical island and the two Florida pieces were found on Pinterest. I already had the cocktail shaker one,  though that probably came from Pinterest too. 

Once I'd decided on this layout it didn't take me long to finish, with the orange and pink jewels being the last elements I added. Again, it didn't finish how I first thought it would, but I do like the way it came out in the end.

I quite often get a bit of ephemera or some stickers in my letters from my penpals, and so that I can remember who they came from, I like to use the ones from each penpal separately, plus they quite often take me in a style direction that I wouldn't have normally followed. I have some space-themed postage stamps and a card from Nasa in one letter I received recently, so my next page will have a space theme to it that I wouldn't have chosen without having those starting pieces.

I'll be back again on Sunday.

TTFN
Louise

A couple of junk journal pages

I've been having a bit of a play in my  junk journal and created these two pages. I used the pages as they were in the journal as they were too nice to cover up. Then I just had a look a look through one of my boxes of stuff and found the make do and mend image first, which was closely followed by the cupcake one. So I decided to do one sewing and one cake themed page.

I spent a very pleasant hour.

I'll be back on Thursday.

TTFN
Louise