Alienor’s Treasure Box Junk Journal

Hey, everyone! Stephanie Manuel of Smiling Sunlight, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Alienor’s Treasure Box Junk Journal for us this week. As you know, we feature one new Junk Journal project each week created by one of our creative team of artists. Our Design Team Members select from the 100’s of Vintage Image Bundles on our Premium Membership Site, for their creations, in order to show you beautiful ways to use those images. We hope you will be totally inspired by this series!

Therefore, please make sure you check out the video tour at the bottom of the page…please scroll all the way down to see it. Are you ready to be inspired? I will step out of the way and let Stephanie tell you all about her incredible project…

Bonjour, it’s Stephanie from Smiling Sunlight. I have the pleasure to share with you my last journal for this term as a member of the Graphics Fairy Design Team Project using images from their Premium membership website. This journal is about a fascinating queen known as Aliénor of Aquitaine, (English: Eleanor). In my studies of ancient civilization, she is one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages that I have heard about. At a very young age she became one of the wealthiest and most powerful heiress in Western Europe since her family owned half of the South region of France. She was said to be modern for her time, wise and intelligent. She was born around the year of 1122, has been not only the Queen of France but also of England, mother of three kings including Richard the Lionheart. That whole medieval theme was wonderful to play with in this journal telling stories of kings, knights, princesses, emblems and legends. As you know I love exploring origami to add interactive elements in my journals. This time I adapted a paper folding technique that can turn a collaged box into a flat card and be stored easily in a journal!
Combining this flip up collaged box display with the story of Alienor’s legacy represented through 9 portraits of queens and princesses, I have the pleasure to present “Alienor’s Treasure
Box Journal”.

The cover of the main box is completely designed digitally bringing each symbolic elements linked to Queen Alienor together: gold foil added to the fleur de lys pattern, turning the lion into blue outline… Deep red and royal blue were two powerful royal colours of the medieval era that I made sure to add here. Wanting it to look like a medieval tapestry, I hand stitched the frame with wool. The knight card was also digitally adapted by merging another horse with the symbols. The card can stand up like a place card.

 

The cover and pages of the mini journal are recycled file folders and printed tea dyed paper. The old way of folding medieval letters inspired me to create each page pockets and I used document binding with only two holes. The portrait of Queen Alienor on the cover of the mini journal was digitally designed; turning a colored portrait in black and white then adding a crown, a church window became the frame, applying gold foil to the fleur de lys pattern.

Vintage labels and postage stamps are the two main types of ephemera that I love adding in my collage. Following some digital tutorials on the Graphics Fairy Premium site, I created my own French labels. French text from beautiful French ephemera image bundles were selected then merged with the label image. The individual postage stamp images were digitally placed together to create groups of three stamps that I can tear if needed just like real stamps.

It’s fun and more inspiring to have ready to use correct size images that’s already aged right?! So I created my own collage chapbooks, inspired by real chapbooks. Chapbooks were small cheaply produced book format popular in the 19th century for “common” people to afford reading materials. My collage chapbooks are already cute as they are and can be displayed in the journal. Then whenever I need a page for a collage, I’ll simply tear it off and glue it just like I did inside the main box or at the back of the journal.

The idea of the folded flat boxes has been on my mind since a while and I’m very happy to see how they turned out. I’m inspired to continue to explore it more. Each little collaged box can be displayed as is or stored flat in an envelope or a journal.

It has been an honour and great pleasure to explore this journal adventure with you all. Thank you very much Graphics Fairy and all of the passionate crafters who are supporting my work.
Just like Queen Alienor, you are unique and inspiring and your art deserves to be seen and shared. I invite you to connect on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, look for Smiling Sunlight.

Make sure to watch the flip through video by clicking the link below and all image bundles used are listed here.

ALIENOR’S TREASURE BOX JUNK JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Premium site bundles used:

Gothic Autumn
Shakespearean Women
Shakespearean Women 2
Intricate Frames
Royal Life
Papier Francais
Grande Saison
Ephemera Collection
Lilies
Scarborough Fair
Academy of Witches
African Safari
Red & Green Ephemera
Christmas Religious Icons
Junk Journaling
Parcel Post
Green Gables Inspired
Black & Cream Ephemera
Delicate Endpapers
Fall Wallpaper
Spring Endpapers

 

Stephanie

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