Grateful Junk Journal | Andrea Gray

A few weeks ago I went thrifting - specifically looking for an old and worn book that I could use as some kind of mini book. I didn't have a specific project in mind but I knew I wanted to have a fairly hard cover book with loved pages.

I found this gem at my local thrift shop and it sat on my shelf just waiting for the perfect thing to give it a fresh new life.

The commonplace book seemed like a great idea but after really considering what that would be, I didn't want another memory keeping book. But I have been so intrigued by junk journals and have so many fun little trinkets that I would love to collect and decorate - for absolutely no reason or purpose! So when I saw a fellow crafty friend add binder rings to the spine of her handmade cardboard book - I KNEW this was it!

I immediately grabbed my exacto knife and carefully separated the pages from the cover.

Then I grabbed my two favorite patterned papers from the Autumn collection and some supplies I thought would be best and got to work covering the outside and inside.

After lots of mistakes (because sometimes I shoot from the hip) and my hands covered in glue like I was back in Kindergarten - this beautiful book got a gorgeous makeover. But this is just the beginning!

I trimmed the plaid paper to cover the inside seams along with a smaller strip for the spine section so the cover opens and closes smoothly.

Next I loosely measured the diameter of the part of the binder ring where it would rest on the spine and used the tip of my knife to poke and twist the holes. 

And now we have a finished binder that's ready to get filled with all kinds of lovely bits!

The next thing I did was grab some die cuts and decorate the cover. I like the idea of using this junk journal as a place to add things I'm grateful for as the overall theme - but am not holding myself to that necessarily. So I punched the GRATEFUL circle from one of the journaling cards and matted it with a coral paper from the kit.

Simple is good here. Just a few key pieces and it felt right!

Since there were just so many other papers I adored - I decided to make a pocket for the front cover and use one of the big tags from the Heidi kit as a place to add a little journaling. It's got that fresh fall feeling and makes me want to cozy up and craft the days away! So I continued to cut up some of my favorite papers along with several fun vintage papers and tags from my stash and filled it up! Check out the fun little video I made about this book and all of the fun stuff I added to it!

Thanks for hanging with me today! I hope you’ve got some super crafty plans with the new Autumn kit or even finding a new fun way to be creative!

See you soon!
Andrea

Supplies: November Autumn Kit | Autumn Paper Pack | Autumn Die Cut Shapes | Autumn Journaling Cards | Heidi Story Tags