Beyond the Boardwalk Junk Journal
Hey, everyone! Julie Rohrer of August Birdsong, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Beyond the Boardwalk 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 Julie tell you all about her lovely project…
Hello Everyone! July seemed like a good month to go to the beach, but we’re traveling back via trains and vintage automobiles to 1916 on the New Jersey shoreline. Why so long ago? 1916 was a year when American train travel was at its peak, and during its hot summer, thousands of working class city dwellers as well as the social elite headed to the Jersey Shore for the novelty of swimming in the ocean.
For the cover, I glued some gelli prints as the background to the vintage Better Homes and Gardens ring-bound binder I used for the journal. I stitched the edges before glueing them down and then decorated both sides with digital images of sea life as well as ribbon, lace, die cuts, and the photo of the beach-goers frollicking in the sand.
I copied and pasted the sea life creatures in the bundles onto a google document where I could enlarge them to various sizes before fussy cutting them out and inking their edges with distress ink. Some of the images and die cuts are on adhesive squares to create dimension.
The clock hands were die cuts that I attached to the center sea creature with a brad. Sand dollar die-cuts decorate the front and back covers as well.
As you can see, I did some layering of images and die cuts on the inside of the cover as well.
The “Day-Trippers” page is all about the working class people who took the trains to the shore for some fun in the sun. I used a quote from the European Train Travel bundle as well as the train image, and placed it on adhesive squares to make it stand out on the page. Some of the background is from The Typesetter bundle.
For “Mile a Minute”, I used some of the paper from the European Train Travel bundle again as well as an image of a vintage car that I found in the archives and made into a pocket for some other vintage train travel ads that were in the archives as well. You’ll notice that I added a lot of gears with metallic colors to capture the Industrial Age feel of 1916 when technology had become very mechanical with automobiles, trains, factories, and even household appliances like telephones, toasters, and refrigerators.
The “Electricity” page is all about the science and machinery that was emerging in the early 1900’s. In the summer of 1916, Polio cases were on the rise in the cities, which was another reason people wanted to go to the shore. While some vaccines had been developed by this time, Polio would not have a vaccine for decades. To create a mechanical feeling on the page, I took some broken chain from an old necklace and connected it on the wheel with brads. I also used a lot of clock imagery in the journal because they are mechanical but also “time is money”, and mass production of clothing, appliances, and cars had taken hold in the country.
On the page “Votes for Women”, suffragettes are marching for women’s right to vote in the United States in 1916, and even though many endured hunger strikes, jail time, and physical abuse, women would not have the freedom to vote until 1920 with the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I put clock-hands on the page to represent time ticking away for their cause. The “Victory Girls” poster was in regards to WWI being fought in Europe in 1916. Within a year, America would become involved as well. I added the woman with the bicycle to this page because its creation in the late 1800’s allowed women more freedom and independence than they had ever had. It also influenced women’s fashion leading to more practical and comfortable clothing without the burden of hoop skirts, bustles, and corsets.
For “The American Dream” page, I layered images of travel and leisure activities, like tennis, board games, and books for reading. While the man on the page is from the more wealthy class of travelers, 1916 was a year when people in the working class started to enjoy short getaways to the beach due to the speed and relatively inexpensive cost of traveling by train.
With the double spread of “Take Me Away”, we’re finally at the beach! A woman sits quietly looking out to sea while children play in the water. That scene is actually a pocket that will have beach photos placed in it. The muted green background is from TGF and was printed on adhesive backed fabric that I ordered online. Both pages are decorated with shells, fish, and even a shark. The green plant swaying around the shark is actually the long tentacles of a jellyfish that I enlarged, cut apart, flipped upside down, and colored green. The brown coral in the corner of the shark page is actually a mushroom from the “Owls & Mushrooms” printable page that I cut down and flipped sideways to create that sense of a reef in the ocean.
I call this the “Mermaid” page; the mermaid came from the “Ocean Blues” bundle and was one of the premade journal pages. Opposite the mermaid is a pocket made from a gelli print of mine. I’ve added those seabirds to the page as well as several quotes from the “Le Mer” bundle. The photo of the “sailor” woman is from the “Ancient Ancestors” bundle, but the other two photos came from the archives.
While there are several more beach pages than I showed in this blog, I hope you got some ideas for ways to create a beach themed journal or page as well as some travel pages. One of the things that I enjoy the most about The Graphics Fairy bundles is the ability to cut, paste, and enlarge images on my own google document; it allows me to create my own mix and match ephemera for each project. I would also highly recommend looking in the archives that are linked to the weekly newsletter from TGF for any photos or ephemera that you’re not finding in the bundles. There is so much available that can be found with a few words in the search window.
Finally, a lot of my facts about life in 1916 came from one of my favorite books, Close To Shore by Michael Capuzzo. Consider how things you have read or stories you have heard might inspire your journal making.
BEYOND THE BOARDWALK JUNK JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR
Let’s take a tour of it together:
<
The bundles that I used were:
- Bikes & Gears
- Creatures of the Deep
- Digi People Photos
- European Train Travel
- Instant Ancestors
- La Mer (The Sea)
- Masculine Ephemera
- Ocean Blues
- Science & Laboratory
- Sea Life Ephemera
- Seaside Holiday
- She Sells Seashells
- Shore Birds
- Steampunk Aesthetic
- The Typesetter
- Vintage Everyday Objects
Happy Crafting!
Julie
Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!
