Photographer’s Junk Journal
Hey, everyone! Sharon Coughlin of Mad Paper Crush, one of our amazing new Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Photographer’s 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 Sharon tell you all about her incredible project…
Hi friends! Sharon from Mad Paper Crush, back to share my 5th (can you believe it??) design team journal for The Graphics Fairy. I’m calling this my Photographer’s Journal, as I imagine it was made by a woman photographer from the late 1800’s. Join me as we take a look at what’s inside!
This journal is about the size of a small photo album, about 8” x 6” and it’s got a 2” spine – which is a good thing since it’s packed with fabrics and pages that take up a lot of room! I just loved the cover photo which came from the Digi People kit where there are a couple of photo album covers. The cabinet card on the removable cover piece came from the milliner’s kit and I used embossed paper and gilding wax to frame it.
The inside front cover has a pocket made from some of the heritage wallpaper on fabric and has a cabinet card from my own collection. I’ve also clipped on a calling card that I made from roses in the Victorian Scrap Roses kit. The first page of the journal has an album frame from the Vintage Album Frames kit and one of the many cabinet cards tucked inside from the Antique portraits kit.
You’ve seen me do it before – and well, I’m doing it again – printing on old ledger paper! The digi people kit has wonderful cut out graphics that are perfect for printing on top of other antique papers you might have. A second small vintage frame is included here with a beautiful couple on what looks like possibly their wedding day – heading out for their month-long honeymoon!
This baby in a Christening dress fits just perfect in this album frame, surrounded with pink and white flowers and a little bit of ruffled pink fabric as the tab to pull the picture out of the frame!
I love adding little tip-in pages to my journals, creating secret places to journal! This beautiful piece on the left side is from the Heritage Wallpaper kit and makes a great little flip. I also used many of the wallpaper pieces in my die cut machine to create little labels and bookplates throughout the journal.
I printed the album frames in different sizes because I wanted this journal to really look pieced together. I imagine the photographer who made it saved bits from albums that she loved, and added photos of people she either photographed herself, or was just inspired by the portraits of other photographers.
I’m not sure I can make a journal without an envelope in it – and this journal is no exception! This large green envelope backs on of the album frames and has another large handmade cabinet card inside!
The colors on the vintage album frames really add something to the black and white (or sepia in this case!) cabinet cards, and I love the way they work together. On the right side of this spread, I added another portrait of a young girl and her calling card – made with the Victorian Scrap Roses kit.
This spread includes even more album frames, and this time I printed out some of the photos smaller than expected to fit inside the openings. Each of these has a little tab on them so you can pull them out!
Our fictitious photographer in training is also learning to create stereoscopes, and this is one of her first ones (Ok – really I printed it out from the premium site and backed it with some cardstock to make it feel like a real stereocard!).
I couldn’t stop imagining who this family might be in this photograph – and love how casually the boy in front has his arm over the knees of his mother. I also printed some script writing on the paper behind the album frame using the brush sets included with The Graphics Fairy kits – it makes it so easy to add interest to pages.
I decided to print some more of the wallpaper onto the edge of this ledger paper, and the colors match perfectly. My ledger papers were a little brittle so I added some fabric to the fold to be sure everything held together. For this album frame on the right, I created a little collage tag that had the back of a cabinet card on it, and since the backs of these cards can sometimes be works of art themselves, I thought it was perfect to showcase inside the frame.
The last album frame, as well as the last signature page of the journal has just a small opening, surrounded by beautiful flowers and botanicals. The opening was just perfect to fit the portrait of these two sisters inside. I put them on a long tag that could easily be taken out of the frame and hold some journaling on the back. On the right side, the inside back cover has an authentic antique cabinet card from my collection in another large frame that I printed out. I made a tip-in from it as another interactive element to the journal. You can see it open in the next photo.
The last part of the journal has a few fabric swatches with little die cut labels on them. I imagine our photographer was sampling some of the fabrics she could use for her hood on accordion box camera!
Thank you so much for looking through my Photographer’s journal with me!
PHOTOGRAPHER’S JUNK JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR
Premium Membership Bundles used in this project:
Antique Album Pages
Spring Album Frames
Vintage Album Frames
Victorian Scrap Roses
Antique Portraits 1
Antique Portraits 2
Instant Ancestors 1
Instant Ancestors 2
Heritage Wallpapers
Wallpaper Samples
Sharon’s YouTube
Sharon’s Etsy shop
Sharon’s Instagram
Thanks so much!
Sharon
Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!
