Seed Sower’s Companion Junk Journal

Hey, everyone! Valerie Burton of Little Maine Cottage, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Seed Sower’s Companion 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 Val introduce herself and tell you all about her incredible project…

The size of this vintage-style junk journal is about 8 3/8”(inches) x 6”(inches). The spine width is 2”(inches) with 180 page sides which are divided into 5 signatures.

While wandering through a friend’s beautiful garden last year, I was inspired to create a garden type journal. The garden was full of different types of flowers, fruits, and vegetables all lovingly placed around pretty paths for a wanderer to enjoy. Although I am not a gardener, mental images of what type of a journal that a gardener might desire started to germinate (pun intended) in my mind. A place to make notes of what to plant and when, with blank spaces to plan garden layouts, as well as room to store seed packets for ready use…a place for what is imagined to become a reality.

Fast-forward a bit to this past winter, I found a book I have loved for many years entitled ‘In and out of the Garden’ by Sara Midda in a thrift store. I already had a copy and I could never take it apart to use for crafting. However, finding a thrifted copy for a mere pittance was perfect! I utilized the cover, which had beautifully foxed over the years, along with several of the interior pages and my ‘Seed sower’s Companion’ began to take shape.

I typed the word “seed” and “garden” into the search bar on the Premium Membership site and a plethora of amazing imagery materialized on screen begging to be printed for use. Digging around in my stash of usable bits, I found some antique photos, invoices, receipts, as well as vintage ephemera such as seed packets and trade cards. I combined these materials along with some textiles, metal bits and a shard of mica and the journal in my imagination became a reality. Even though I was ruthless with editing down with what I felt was the essentials, my ‘Seed sower’s Companion’ ended up with a gator-mouth! Oh well.

I constructed the cover out of the original book boards from the thrifted book and created a 2 inch wide spine. This I covered with a William Morris printed fabric called Strawberry Thief and added a strip of ribbon, long saved from a gift basket, along with a bit of vintage trim to use for headbands. I needed to protect the tiny front picture, so I added a square of mica and framed the piece with decorative washi tape. Using a vintage button, that matched the foxed boards, along with ink-stained ribbon for the tie closure. Decorative metal protectors were placed on the four exposed corners.

My aim was to preserve and enhance the beautifully foxed cover along with the sweet little watercolor picture of the tiny person sitting on the huge potato.

On the inside of the front cover, I applied a green leaf endpaper and added a salvaged antique die-cut of strawberries. Over this I sewed on a belly-band made from vintage trims in which to hold a little notebook made out of a blue paper and a marbled endpaper print. I decorated this with a picture of a seed envelope harvested from a book and added a small label. I finished the page by adding two labels, one is digitally printed and the other is hand-stamped on stained paper.

Right: This shows one of the ten pages I used out of the original vintage book as an anchor page. I added a torn piece of a pink endpaper as a decorative support for the page, and used a tiny paperclip to attach a picture of a flower advertisement, cut out of a book, to use as a journaling card.

On the left, I combined a forget me not parchment print and a pink-gold flower endpaper to make the page and added a tab from the Cultivating Beauty journal tabs and stickers printable. I used a tiny paperclip to hold an antique photograph and a page from a vintage flower book.

Right: The seed catalog cover looks so pretty printed on vellum and used as a page.

On the left side, I created a page using a commercially printed cardstock with some torn paper washi tape, for a page support, and made a belly-band out a pink endpaper. On this is collaged a tiny torn fragment of a meadow endpaper along with a stamped number. I used another tab from the Cultivating Beauty journal tabs and stickers printable on the page edge and sewed around the page. I slipped in two cards for extra journaling space.

Right: I printed this seed catalog price list on linen paper with inked edges.

Left: I printed this sweet pea cover on stained paper and inked the edges.

Right: For this page, I folded an authentic seed store invoice from 1902 in which to hold two journal cards harvested from a book and backed with stained paper.

To the coffee stained page on the left, I created a pocket out of an endpaper print inked, sewed and slipped in a journaling card created from a flower advertisement cut from a book, a seed envelope printed from my stash along with a constructed an envelope from the ‘cultivating beauty’ bundle. The pocket front was decorated with a printed label.

Right: On this page, I sewed on a vintage postcard as a tuck for the large botanical journal card created out of a salvaged book page.

Left, I used this beautiful tattered rose wallpaper printed on linen paper with inked edges made such a pretty page all on it’s own.

Right: I combined commercially printed card-stock with a pocket made from the pink and green ephemera bundle and finished the front with a blue label. I machine stitched the perimeter and placed vintage ephemera inside.

I combined a coffee-stained book page of a garden illustration with cardstock scrapbook paper and machine stitched the perimeter to create two pocket pages, holding envelopes made from printables.

For the bookmark, I used the original vintage spine from my thrifted book on one side and on the other I used a printable spine saying ‘my own garden’ ,aged with a bit of ink, added an eyelet and used stained seam-binding for the topper.

 I printed this pink green wallpaper on linen paper to use as a page.

Right: This side was constructed as a flip-out page by combining two floral papers. Using two  endpaper prints, I created two pockets in which I placed an authentic receipt for garden seeds from 1844, a lettuce seed packet, and a seed envelope printable. A tiny label was added to the front. To the top of this page I added another tab from ‘cultivating beauty’ journaling tabs and stickers printable. Both page and pockets are machine stitched.

Left side consists of a foxglove print along with torn and ink-stained pieces of floral prints. A tab punched from a blue endpaper and machine stitching was added.

The right side as well as the die-cut multi-level pocket were constructed out of scrapbook card-stock. A round pink rose label was used for the flip tab and the edge was machine stitched. The pockets are filled with a Petunia seed envelope I made from my collection.

SEED SOWER’S COMPANION JUNK JOURNAL SHOW  & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Premium Membership Bundles used in this project:

CULTIVATING BEAUTY
SEED CATALOG
CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW INSPIRED
FORGET ME NOT
DELFT BLUE EPHEMERA
PINK & GREY EPHEMERA
PINK & GREEN EPHEMERA
PINK GOLD & GREEN EPHEMERA
ATTIC PAPER STASH
FRENCH BLUE & CREAM EPHEMERA
CREAM & GREEN EPHEMERA
SPRING MEADOWS ENDPAPERS
SPRING ENDPAPERS
DELICATE ENDPAPERS
RICH MARBLED ENDPAPERS
TATTERED PAPER TREASURES 2
VINTAGE PAPERIE

I hope you will visit me here:

Val’s Instagram

Val’s YouTube

Val’s Etsy

Val

 

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