Junk Journal July - Days 11 to 20

Continuing with the Junk Journal July pages (if you missed the first post, go back one), the Day 11 prompt was FUSSY CUTTING.  I had done quite a bit of fussy cutting already on previous pages, but continuing in that vein was fine with me.

"You belong among the wildflowers, you belong on a boat out at sea..."  Yes, I had the Tom Petty song earworm the whole time I made this, which was not at all a bad thing as it's one of my favorites.

DYED was the prompt for Day 12. I used scraps of hand-dyed fabric (by Vicki Welsh), sewn together and then sprayed with a bleach solution to discharge the dye in spots, then rinsed, dried, and finished with a poem in Sharpie marker.  A bookmark of several strands of gold pearl cotton completed the page.

MIRRORED and NATURE were the prompts for Days 13 and 14, which I combined into a two-page spread.  I was inspired by a quote one of my Facebook friends posted that morning, along with another friend's gift—actually the gift wrap, which was a shiny mylar—both of which became incorporated into these two pages.  I also used a photo taken by me last year, rubber stamps, transfer butterflies, fabric scrap, and more fussy cut dried plant pictures on tea-dyed paper.

The next day's prompt was TEXTURE, and I threw a lot of bits and pieces at this endeavor.  Literally, bits of what would otherwise be tossed as trash from a forage through a drawer:  Waxed paper cough drop wrapper, corrugated cardboard, stretch wrap bandage, plastic packaging, part of a paper coin sleeve, knit tubular fabric bandage, postage stamp, etc.  I embellished it with fussy-cut flowers, jute cording, latex and tempera paints.  The stamping was done with some of the corrugated cardboard in a crosshatch pattern.

ONE-SIDED was the prompt I worked on for Day 16.  It seemed like a good time to assemble the grooms that I had trimmed off and saved from the BOUQUET journal page (see previous post), being one side of the wedding photo equation. I grouped them on one side of the page as well. 

Luckily, it worked out that there was a blank page available opposite the brides (BOUQUET) page, so that's where the men were congregated.  Looks like they all could use a stiff drink!

It's safe to say that by this point in the junk journaling process, I was starting to find my groove.  Day 17 prompt was GO-TO PALETTE, so I went with what seemed to speak to me most, collage with a vintage 1970s pattern, flowers, and fabric.  This turned out to be one of my favorites so far!

CUT OUT was the prompt for Day 18.  I kept it pretty simple and was happy with the effect. I overlaid a fussy-cut wreath on vellum page and then cut out the middle to reveal a vintage portrait on the page behind it.  The photo of "Anna" is from the 1880s; she was a friend and neighbor of my ancestors.  

She seems to be looking over at the ladies next to her, which made me think of the old jingle, "You've come a long way, baby..."  How things changed in those 90 years between!

Days 19 and 20 were TUCKED AWAY and BLACK AND WHITE. I combined them into this two-page deal. I made a pocket, or tuck spot on the left corner.  I kept the left side in the black and white theme, but then carried it over into the right side with a horoscope diagram of the 12 houses, and a different type of sign (i.e. not zodiac) with a bit of whimsy. Backgrounds are pages from a coloring book, one blank and one I colored in a couple years ago. 

The pocket is an image from an Edgar Alan Poe story, and those are my fingerprints on the left side above it, an idea that looked better in my head than on paper, but that's okay.

That brings things up to date through the first two-thirds of Junk Journal July.  I'll have one more JJJ post next week to wrap it up.  Then it's back to quilts!  I have two back from the longarmer to bind and the Positivity QAL quilt to put together, for starters.

~Paulette