Junk Journal: Prepping your Pages

After reorganizing my craft supplies I found my box of "junk" to be rather full. This box of "junk" that I am referring to has a variety of items in it that I don't want to throw out, yet there's really nothing special about them. This can include envelopes that I've received, packaging, bookmarks or postcards with advertising on them, tags from clothes, old calendars, and paper bags. In order to empty some of these things out without throwing them away I have decided to make another Junk Journal, and this is how.

1. I started by pulling a selection of items that I wanted to use the most, as well as items that I thought would go together color wise and similar in size. When choosing your junk keep in mind that anything you want to turn into a base for a page should be fairly sturdy, such as a brown paper bag. You can always glue two papers together to add strength.

2. Start making the base for your pages. All the brown paper bags I used I took the handles off, you may decide to leave them on and that is just fine. I glued two calendar pages together, trimmed off the top of some of the paper envelopes and bags. You may find that some items you don't need to do anything to them yet and that they are ready to be turned into a page just as they are. I folded the base of the paper bags several different ways in order to make future pockets. Try not to focus on what is on your pages at this point, unless there is a logo or something you want to remain visible. If you end up having a page that is more printed then you would like you can always go over it with a thin coat of gesso to tone it down, but we'll deal with that next time! Right now you are just making the base of your pages.

Here are my 16 pages all ready to have more junk put on them!