Stitching Together an Upcycled Junk Journal Part 1 - Stash Dash 2015 - The Diva of Junk Journals

If you love sewing on paper, junk journals, upcycling, stamping, gluing, and any of the above, this project's for you!

-Click here for my Stash Dash 2015 Five Simple Rules-

This year I'm upcycling more, shopping stash, and really using what I have, and this junk journal fits right in. Anything goes - really - you could use anything. I was grabbing a little lonely piece of ribbon I saw laying on my craft table and stitching it onto a page to my own delight. That's how this junk journal works!

Gelatos and ribbon stitched on the inside back cover

The basis for my junk journal is my old planners. Every year, I have been choosing a really cute art journal-style planner from Orange Circle. I love how the weekly calendar pages mix in with lovely, inspiring journal pages, and by the end of the year I should have written, colored, or drawn on every one of them! But, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Over the years, I have kept my little planners, and I don't know what it is, but you are not as likely to look back in old planners for thoughts, and lists and things like you do your regular art journals. So, my latest junk journal was born. It is, in reality, an upcycled planner that became a diva.

I had to add a random key in memory of all those girlhood diaries with a key.

My first task was to choose two planners from years past, grab the craft knife, and start cutting out the pages I wanted. That's when I decided that to really reinforce them for vigorous usage in this amazing junk journal, I would stitch the pages together, and at the same time I would be hiding the old calendar pages. I don't really want to see them anymore, and yet they are still there, all tucked inside the pretty pages.

Inside the front cover

Some pages were hand-stitched with pearl cotton floss, and a lot of the pages were stitched together on the sewing machine with a variety of zig-zag stitches. Whatever you like! I added a little embroidery to some pages, beads, buttons, ribbon, diecuts and stamping. You could also do sequins, and really any embellishment you like. Remember - this is the diva of junk journals. When you are done with your handwork, you will be holding a glamorous little mixed-media take-me-with-you-and-write-in-me one-of-a-kind book of thoughts, dreams, lists, quotes...book of you!

The front cover shows off with beads hanging on a cute paper bobbin.

I had some adorable paper bobbins made by Yarnology at Hobby Lobby...so one of them had to go on the front cover with beads hanging off of it. This tells the world, I'm somebody who threads a needle every day and paints with it.

Come back tomorrow, and the diva of junk journals will bare her inner-most pages and how she finally got it all together!

Eat, Write, Dream, Stitch a Junk Journal