Jingle In July Journals-sneak peek

Jingle In July journals, a coin name invented by someone in the junk journal community to describe Christmas themed books made in the summer.

I've been working on a total of three Christmas books for almost my entire July. It started with the middle one shown in the picture, but didn't end there when I found I had lots of materials left to make more Christmas based journals. I had plans to make only two, but as always I found I could only bind so much with the wire sizes I had in particular colors, so I had to split the second journal and make a third. 

In the end it all turned out fine, proper contents and colors winding up in the right book after I split the pages for the Winter Wonderland journal and used the more country shades and earth tones to make the Cozy Christmas book (shown on the left).

I'll try to get more in depth on the details of these books in separate posts later on. Still have quite a lot of work to do in each of them, mostly detail work.

It seems that July must just be one of those months that brings out the want for colder seasons...specifically December. Even Joann's advertises towards this odd new craze, which makes me ask myself how many people like making Christmas crafts in July? And is this a common thing?

The reason I started it is because every summer for many years now, I find myself dreaming of the colder months when it gets really hot out. 

In my case I seem to get in the mood for the opposite season in art depending on the time of year. If it's summer I feel relaxed making winter themed things. If it's spring I'll want Autumn, and if it's winter I'll get summery ideas. 

I find that instead of waiting to do something seasonal when it's the season, I do better making themes out of season. 

The reason I started my recent Christmas journal craze is because I started wanting to experiment with all the fliers I had on hand, and gathered together a bunch of Christmas ones. I also found that during my work on these books, I realized something silly.

I like holidays as concepts in a fantasy setting. In real life they don't have the same charm or balance that they do in my head, and that to me is the beauty of imaginary settings; everything is more fun to me when it's in fantasy.