Western Look Journal

HRH got this advertisement pkg about a special edition truck.  In the pkg was a small 5X8 sized booklet with quite a heavy black stamped and carved look leather cover.  Inside the booklet, the pages looked like an old photo album and had a table of contents and five chapters about the truck.  I glommed on to the booklet and threw it in my journal making stash.
A few days ago, I ran onto the booklet.  I pulled out my b/w image stash and put a round image on the front to cover up the truck ad title.  I had to keep going once that occured.  I decided to search my stash for "western" themed pictures.  I really do not have much of that but found enough to cover up the printed parts of the booklet.
After playing with this booklet for a few days, here is the end of it.  I love it!

The cover with a second more western type image readded, a concho and some leather and some brown stained lace.

Inside cover and table of contents page...

Chapter one... can't you see the light areas covered up with sepia ink writing?

A spread using some old pattern papers and an image...

A coloring book image and old pattern paper...

Found images, a paper napkin...And these pages open from the center to make a four page spread...

The two photos above is of the four page spread.  I added the "ladies of the west" to pages.  You get to see some of the beauty of UT in the background so I of course left that!

Oh, whoops, this is the pages that open to the center spread...

I like that there is lots of light color left for journaling on most of the pages.  

One could write their own story...

I did leave the chapter titles... I kinda of liked the idea of designated chapters...

And I left the left side because the graphic is lovely and I by now I am running out of resource western type images...

Last pages... wish you could see the tooled leather look to the inside back cover...

And the back cover... the end.

This was a fun journal to make and I love that it is made from junk mail!

Old Ledger Pages Journals

Okay, as promised, the journals made from old ledger pages.  I found two very vintage ledgers while in Denver last March at a thrift shop.  The pages in one is two sizes so I made two sizes of journals from some of the pages.  The paper is quite heavy weight so should hold up well.  I took out some of the ledger pages, and had fun with spray ink mists and my stencils.  The covers I made from fabric scraps.  I love the feel and look of these journals!  I find I am tending to the soft covers over board covers.  Which do you like to use the best?

I have this female body stencil I cut out of a magazine that I like, and a head from a magazine too so I put them together.  Kind of-I don't know, ET ish?  lol.  And the little star is from a YSM find, from sizzix...a couple of punches and a little hammer.  Not sure about that yet but I tried it out and it punched through quite a few pages at once.  The #s are an alphbet stencil and the yellow is flowers.  These pages are pretty pastel so the writer/artist will be able to add their own touches to the pages.

More plastic stencil sheets and a face from a magazine...

Again, a face from a magazine and flower stencil...

Alphabet stencils and a bird from a magazine...layered as you can see.

Love the pastel colors!

Bird and such again...

And the cover... love the old pink hand repurposed crochet and the repurposed from a tea towel embroidered bird too!  Scraps, free motion sewing, and fun!

The larger sized cover still drying so no scan.

I have made about three or four more covers using up scraps from my sewing scraps tub.  How amazing it is to make something beautiful from what most people would throw (and have thrown, lol) away.

Making Journals

I have had several unfinished journal books here there everywhere.  Last week, I decided to finish them and it was so much fun, I even made a couple of new ones.  I got to just play play play.  I might have enough to take to the farmer's market to sell.

An upcycled board book with pockets...

Layers and layers of color...

Stenciled cards for the pockets...

A painting mounted for a cover...

Water colored washes inside...

A repurposed day planner...

With lots of eye candy on pages ready for writing...

A repurposed commercial journal with a new cover...

And flowers and water color washes added to the pages...

A small 1940s vintage leather photo album with new cover...

And the old black pages replaced with lovely scrap book papers...

Resized book covers to fit pages cut from old pattern papers...

And such fun to stencil the old pattern pages with homemade alcohol inks...

And another 1940s vintage red leatherette photo album with roses added...

And some hand decorated and scrap papers replacing the black photo original pages.  I left in the textured tissue/vellum pages that were between the old black pages because they have an awesome snowflakey texture to them.  

And, because I had so much fun with the alcohol ink stenciling, I made two more journals using old ledger pages which I stenciled again.  Now I have to make covers for them.  I will show you those in a few days.  Do you love journals as much as I do?

Art Journal Pages

Here are a couple of pages I have in my journal waiting for some "great words of wisdom" to be written by me.  I don't often have something come to mind that I think is worth journaling about, so many of the decorated pages in my art journal are just art for now.  But, if I ever have an epiphany, they are there!

I have not idea why I made this... just playing, lol.

And these... well, they are fun but why did I make them?

Dog Days of Summer Journal Art

Usually, this time of year, we are sweltering with heat.  Not so this year, our dog days of summer have turned into the dog days of gray and rainy summer weather!  Since I had a file of dog images and since I haven't been doing much other art, I decided to to a journal page on the "doggy" weather.  Everyone here in our area are just enjoying the lower temps and the desert is loving the moisture, our rivers are at flood stage, our local dams are overflowing, we have had flash floods, cloud bursts, hail, rain, wind, you name it.  Lots of thunderstorms and lightening with lives lost.    It is just a strange year of weather!

Humidity in our area is not something we have had to deal with very much!  We are happy with it!

I promised myself that I would only post my art here on my blog.
And only talk about it too.
I have been spending most of my time out of doors working on the labyrinth-rock art so to speak.  And, since I was out there taking pictures of the labyrinth I decided to show you my other yard art.  Hope you like the pictures!

A refurbished bird bath and an almost perfectly round rock.

 A huge flat topped rock... that is getting surrounded by a type of sage growth...

Well, I just threw this in... it is a nightmare tangle of hoses...supposed to have a new improved model soon, lol.

Another beautiful rock...the eggs are marble.

Wire rocking chair...fun to look at but not very comfortable.  

And beautiful purple delphiniums that the rain turned upside down...

And after five years, finally blooms on the clematis...

The rock path behind the house to cloud 9 door, lol.  You might have to look real close to see the cloud over the door.  This is one of the doors to the sewing porch.

And some of HRH's creations live along the rock path...

Yard birds...

Cactus...we use this for a bird feeder during the winter...

More cactus'....

Even with blooms!

Bear grass...