Now the bride and groom have seen the journal and are on their honeymoon in Copenhagen I can let you see the journal I created for them. They are hoping to put photos and other keepsakes in it. The theme was pink roses with other cottage garden flowers playing a supporting role.
They also love vintage so I tea dyed the pages and included lots of vintage images, most of which I had used on their
wedding invites. The hard part was not over decorating it to allow them to customise and add to it to make it theirs. I can so easily get carried away, lol.
Some of the lace that I used to make little pockets was off cuts from her dress, to make it more personal. The groom is a musician so I used music sheets throughout, mostly love songs, although there is one, nearer the back of the album where the words are 'I married a wife, she's the plague of my life' but knowing them I knew they would find it funny.
The brides mum found old postcards of the Guildhall, Leicester, where the ceremony was held so I placed them in the pockets so they could see them.
I raided my rather extensive napkin stash for roses and vintage style images, these red roses being opposite a song entitled 'My love is like a red, red rose'.
This vintage postcard was in my collection but I just had to give it to them as it was addressed to someone with the same name as the bride.
This fabric used to be an embroidered linen napkin, old and stained but this portion of it was sound.
This atc was part of my initial designs for the couple's wedding invitations.
The journal was constructed using an old teaching manual and here you can see part of it's spine together with a napkin that the bride gave me. The bride is a teacher so it seemed right to use this book.
I used the same stamps in the journal that I used on the wrapping paper and then a friend kindly lent me her roses stamps so I could add more variety to the images.
Billyboy Studio Assistant was carrying out a bit of quality control , checking the inside back cover for sitability, yes, he was comfy on there until I picked him up.
The pages are all tied in so more or less pages can be used if required. I just adore frayed edges.
I hope I haven't bored you with too many pages, there are more but they are less decorated so that it gives the happy couple more room to personalise their journal.
And here they are on their wedding day, a perfect day, full of love, warmth and friendship. I will long remember it. Many congratulations to you both and I can't wait to see the journal full to overflowing with memories of your special day xx
(I'll pop the whole run through of the journal on my Flickr - see side bar, just in case you're interested)
My other journal is really turning into a labour of love. It's getting even fatter but I don't think it's ready for binding just yet. I thought I'd share just a few pages with you.
I want to use this journal to house some of the many photographs I've taken of cemetery angels and gravestones. Another trip planned soon to Nunhead, one of the big seven Victorian gothic cemeteries that ring London! Can't wait, hope it's a bright sunny day :)
I've made myself a journal in the Full Tilt Boogie class run by Mary Ann Moss. She is one lovely lady, full of great tips and humour and she really gets you going, hence the title. So in no time at all I whipped up this journal.
I love the recycling aspect in her classes. For this journal I used the covers from an old sunday school book that was falling apart. It was dated 1907 and had been awarded to some lucky lad for good attendance.
I used old book pages from books found in charity shops; a gardening encyclopedia, a book on cottage garden flowers, old song books, floral scrapbooking paper and pages from an old Sarah Raven gardening catalogue - she always has such wonderful plant photography in them.
I really like taking old pages and fashioning them into something new.
I left some pages short so I can add papers, photos or embroidery to it in the future. Incidentally my next embroidery class has the theme of summer so I might use this journal as my sketchbook for it, with it's wonderful flower pictures already in there to give me some stitching inspiration.
I also used pages from an old teachers book, which had this pre-raphelite image in there as a descriptive english exercise for the children.
I hope these pages give you a flavour of the journal.
The binding took time but was really easy to understand so I can see alot more of these journals being crafted in the future.
I'm working on my pages for the Nellie Wortman's class, they are already looking full but aways to go yet .....
"What do you mean you didn't clear this space for me? You're not going to move me are you?" I only went out of the room to get some paper to work on and up pops Billy, who proceeds to sprawl just where I want to work, bless him.
If that theme is seems familar to regular readers of my blog it is! My journal for the International Journal swap has the same theme but as it is travelling to different artists I've only done the introductory pages and I wanted to do my own journal and interpretations. Now there must be something I can do with the off cuts???
Billyboy stopped play for a while as he took shelter from the rain and decided that my newly almost clear work table was the obvious choice of spot. Yup, I set too last night and tidied my studio and that almost never happens but knew I was going to need the space.
I then found more wallpaper and had a jolly old time printing away. I think this plate is so beautiful it will find it's way into the journal somewhere.
I just love the way the print came out all imperfect, over this vintage book page.
It's no joke being an active long-haired cat in this heatwave. After doing what a cat does down by the river, chasing water birds and the like, then chasing bluebottles around the house he got his little head down, ahhh.
I got my head down and made this journal page for a lady from Roses on My Table. She's not well and we are contributing a page each for a journal to wish her a speedy recovery.
