Monday, July 20, 2015

Neon City Junk Journal

 
Neon City junk journal; it's creation was a result of my mind reflecting on an old comic book idea, having some headphone packaging I liked the color and brand of (I go through a lot of headphones), and having a craft corner with supplies that's getting out of hand.

I wanted to use up at least some scrap papers and get my corner cleaned up (a work in progress), and I wanted to get my favorite headphone boxes out of the way. At first I was going to make a city themed book of random material revolving around music, clothing stores, night themes, dark colors with bright colors to represent city lights....but then the idea took a different turn.

My first 9x12 cover was decorated using a Victoria's Secret bag. The hot pink with white letters seemed to fit the city theme at first, but then I decided I might want to use that cover for a fashion album, so I decided to make a new cover slightly bigger than a MEAD book (I've always loved the size of MEAD books). I had my decent sized pile of junk for this book collected, and during the time of making it I had been in a big mood for neon colors on black, dreaming about the mythical world of Neon City which is based around music and androids. I considered the idea of making my own scrapbook papers based around the theme.

This journal ended up being the prototype of that dream, and I just slipped that small theme in to add interest to my cover. I used two pizza boxes, two different shades of black scrapbook paper, three main shades of scrapbook paper as my color scheme for the entire book, silver embossing, letter stenciling, and neon jell pens to match the color scheme. These basic materials were used to make the cover, the longest process being the hand crafted record images which I hand painted with emboss glue, added the paper centers, punched holes, then cut them in half and added them to the book.

The final step to make the colors of the cover really pop was to paint it with two layers of Liquitex gloss varnish. It gave it that pretty sheen like a shiny record, which is what I wanted.

Note, the front and back covers align with each other image wise when laid out flat and side by side, but you can't really tell once the book is bound.
After the cover I made pockets and punched holes with my bind it all, using all junk material, not even reaching for scrapbook papers since there weren't really any I had that would match the color scheme. Then I remembered this old neon notebook I got from a yard sale, and decided to use a few sheets of paper from it in the book. These striped papers, to me, made the book, and also helped me settle with categorizing the sections of the book according to color scheme. So we go form yellow green, pink, then orange.

Final step was binding the book with some old wires I had from another book, and adding an old neon green yoyo string as a closure.


Here's a video flip through of the book. Have fun, be inspired. ^.~

A learning experience. Did you know that I was unaware that the scanner couldn't pick up on neon colors? I'm told it's because the shades are so close to the spectrum of light that it's hard for a digital device to pick up on it. Image above is what the scanner made my cover look like. Pink became purple, and green became teal. 

Capturing the colors with a camera was equally tricky, but more successful than a scanner. To me, neon colors are truly amazing, so bright only our eyes can see their true shade.

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