Paper swap junk journal

 

Have you heard of LaWendula's monthly paper swaps?

Go here, check it out, come back.

Cool, huh?

I participated in the October "junk journal" swap.

Partners mailed each other a wide variety of papers for the purpose of creating a junk journal.

I was delighted to learn that my partner was none other than the Paper Swap hostess, LaWendula, herself!

When my envelope arrived from Germany, it was like Christmas.

She had packaged all the bits and scraps of paper in a number of sweet handmade envelopes.

 I really should have taken a picture before I ripped everything open, because it was beautifully packaged.

Look at this! Most people would think I accidentally dumped the recycling bin on the dining room table, but you people know this is treasure!

I decided I would  use this old book as the base for my journal.

It's called "Hockshop" and it's the story of a New York City pawn shop and the family who ran it for generations.  I can't remember where I bought it, but it smells really bad.  But that cover and the end papers were too cool to pass up.  I'm learning to live with the smell.

My rules for this journal:  I can only use the papers sent to me in the swap.

I can add paint or ink or handwriting, and I can use elements of the book to enhance my pages, but I can't use any additional papers.

Here's what I've done so far:

(I like that the price in the upper right hand corner has been reduced not once, but twice.  and I'm pretty sure I payed less than a dollar for it.)

I cut out the woman in red, tucked her in a plastic envelope and glued her onto the image that was already on the page.  I used some of the baker's twine that came in my swap package to hang her from those weird balls.

In the next pages, the colors on the right side were a little too bright for my liking, so I grabbed some paint to tone it down and unify it a bit.

As I sifted through the papers looking for inspiration for my next pages, I was drawn to all the blue ones, so I went for a monochromatic  page on the right, and then painted the left, mimicking the moon in the ship picture.  This was the day after the hurricane, when the wind and rain had finally stopped and I was wishing for calm and peace for all those who suffered losses.

I decided to keep with the monochromatic theme for the next pages - mostly to just use up all the pink and get it out of the way.  I don't use much pink.  I left a little bit of the book text exposed - it reads "I don't like it."  There's a fabric tag on the left that says "Congratulations".  I'm congratulating myself for suffering through the pinkness and coming out the other side.

I currently have all the other bits of papers sorted into piles by color, but I will probably go back to mixing things up rather than staying with the monochromatic theme.  We'll all just have to wait and see.

If you want to see what LaWendula is doing with the paper I sent her, you can check out her pictures on flickr.