Recycled Dragonfly Journal

 (Original post from Pearllight Studio)

Hello everyone, this is the very first recycled journal I've ever made; using several pizza boxes, metallic acrylic paint, embossing, ribbon, plastic beads, and some recycled paper.

It annoys me that I manage to make beautiful stuff on flimsy materials, and yet don't seem to do as well on expensive, better quality materials. I guess because I relax when working on Garb....recycled materials.

Since I had way too much ribbon left I just went with it,and added some matching plastic doughnut beads on the end for weight. Because the ribbon is so long, I fold it upward and use it as a bookmark. I don't really mind the length anyway, it adds a nice whimsical touch.

Here's a front and back view; I loved adding the copper embossing, and the stamps I used gave the book a beautiful touch. For extra texture I went in and stamped gold paint dots to give the background a pollen affect.

Here's the inside, yes it's empty......Don't worry, I'll fill it someday.

I painted the inner cover dark metallic blue with a hint of gold that ended up looking silver.

Making the book

I only have a few pictures of the process, maybe someday when I get better at bookmaking I'll make a video on how it was done. For now here are a few pictures.

 I started off with a pizza box spread out flat, then drew my cover and marked my signature holes.

I made a second outer cover of another pizza box, but didn't give it holes since I wasn't sewing through the spine.

 Here is one of the recycled pages. I took two pages with text on them and faced the text sides together, then glued the edges. This resulted in text that can still be slightly seen through the page, but isn't blatantly noticeable.

  

I left the bottom and top open, takes less glue. You can see how I used text pages and made them usable for drawing, if you don't like text directly in your work.

I went on to paint the covers, emboss, and add ribbons. And also sewing together the book, an enjoyable process.

Enjoy viewing, see you around. :)