Something Blue Junk Journal

Hey, everyone! Abby Monroe, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Something Blue 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 Abby tell you all about her incredible project…

For my final project as part of The Graphics Fairy design team, I wanted to create something truly special. This journal has been quietly forming for many years, but the time never quite felt right—until now. This August, my husband and I celebrate 15 years of marriage. And while it may sound like a cliché, it really was one of the happiest days of my life. Everyone I loved was there, and
everything I loved was woven into the day. It was also one of the most fulfilling creative projects I’ve ever undertaken. We didn’t have much money, but we had a vision: a truly English tea party— flamboyant, eclectic, full of wit, fun, and heart.

A Mad Tea-Party Beginning

The inspiration began with a 1907 illustration by Arthur Rackham for Alice in Wonderland, particularly the scene titled “A Mad Tea-Party”: The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded at one corner of it. “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming. “There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table. Alice’s dress in that image had the most beautiful faded pink roses, and the armchair she sits in was a dreamy, dusky blue. This scene planted the first seed for our wedding theme.

Memory Boxes, Grief, and Rediscovery

We never made a traditional wedding album. Our photographer friends captured the day beautifully, and we printed a few favourites. But everything else—the handmade invitations, “Eat Me” labels, vintage doilies, scraps of fabric, pressed flowers—was packed away in memory boxes. I used to think I simply hadn’t had the time to put them together properly. But I now realise it
was something deeper. In the years following our wedding, we lost many of the people who were there with us. The boxes became difficult to open. Too full of feeling. Too raw.

Reworking the Past
I’ve found myself revisiting the old photographs with fresh eyes, noticing moments I hadn’t truly seen before. I’ve always loved editing photos—I’ve been using Adobe since the ’90s in art college—but Lightroom has taken that to a new level. I’ve been carefully re-editing our original digital photos, adjusting lighting, focus, and tone, giving them the soft, dreamy atmosphere the day deserves.
Some of the images will be printed on luxurious velvet photo paper and tucked into the journal. Others will be bound in a pale blue leather photo book with a handmade fabric slipcover to match.

Creating the Journal
I used an old dictionary cover from a job lot I bought years ago—11×9”, perfect for 10×8” photo prints. I wanted the journal to feel like it belonged to the wedding—like it could have been sitting quietly on a table under the marquee, part of the day itself.

Bound in layers of memory: designer taffeta, lace, and a handmade porcelain charm. I made my wedding dress, three bridesmaid dresses, two flower girl dresses, and even a cravat for my husband—so I had plenty of leftover fabric to work with. I was lucky enough to find two large remnants of pale blue designer taffeta, originally rejected by a couture house, and the tones worked beautifully with the lace I already had. To create the book cloth, I ironed interfacing onto the taffeta and opted for extra-wide double-sided adhesive sheets instead of traditional PVA glue to avoid any staining. They’re more expensive, but the clean finish was worth it for a project this special.
A Ceremony Within a Ceremony
One of the loveliest elements to work on was our original wedding service booklet. I created a new cover for it, to match the rest of the journal, and embellished it using the beautiful floral marriage certificate printable. On the inside cover, I added a photo of my husband and me from just after the ceremony, and placed a wedding ephemera journal pocket made from the printable template. This holds a small luggage tag to write the hymns and music from our service—a quiet keepsake of the sounds that shaped the day. On the first page, I layered the beautiful ribbon heart printable and printed one of our readings—“I carry your heart with me” by E. E. Cummings—onto vellum. I sealed it with gold wax, so it can be opened and read, like a moment folded into the book.

Words We’ll Never Forget
Another precious detail I added was a small folder made from the Envelope King printable. I lined the inside with the Beautiful Script background from The Graphics Fairy, giving it the feeling of an old letter or sealed note from the past. Inside this little folder, I tucked the original speeches from the day: my husband’s speech that left everyone crying and laughing, my brother’s touching speech as he gave me away, and our best woman’s funny dry witted toast. I made a band with a piece of pale blue ribbon saved from the wedding day and added another handmade porcelain charm, this one embossed with our wedding date.

Found Details

The dark blue of the original dictionary cover showed through the pale taffeta, so I first wrapped the board in calico backed with interfacing. I also repurposed the back of a heart-shaped photo frame and covered it in the deeper-toned blue taffeta. A porcelain charm I made for the wedding— featuring our initials impressed into clay and hand-painted in dusky blue—now embellishes the cover. A brooch I wore on the day (which I later had made into a ring) is now stitched to the spine.

A small keepsake, stitched with care into the story.

Pages as a Memory Box
I kept the inner pages loose so they could be added to over time—more like a memory box than a bound book. I still had the first fashion illustration I ever did of my dress, and I’ve added swatches of the original fabric and threads I used. I knew I had to include the vintage invoice image—it just spoke to me. I created a digital collage in Photoshop using the Forget-Me-Not image in different places, layering in a tiara, a bride illustration, and dresses from the 2007 John Galliano Dior collection, which was a huge inspiration for my own gown design.

From my bouquet, I had pressed a few sprigs of gypsophila, and I’ve added them to both the bride and groom pages. The buttonholes also featured forget-me-nots, and miraculously, I found one I had pressed at the time—it was tucked away and now looks so beautiful preserved in the journal. My husband wore a vintage navy blue tuxedo with a top hat, and I found just the right imagery in the Seamstress bundle by searching for tuxedo and top hat. I altered the colour of the suit to match his, and added a few extra details to make it feel like him. I also included some antique cigarette cards from my stash and a porcelain wax seal I made many moons ago. One of my favourite pages is so simple: the bow page. When I found the bow illustration on the site, I instantly loved it. I recreated it in real life, making tiny bows using all the ribbons and some of the leftover fabrics from the wedding. It’s a gentle, tactile memory—small gestures tied up with meaning.

I plan to make additional pages for the bridesmaids, flower girls, and the marquee, which was such a magical part of the celebration. The Delft Blue bundle worked particularly well here, as a nod to the oversized cut-out cups, saucers, and teapots we had hanging in the marquee—another playful homage to our Mad Hatter’s tea party theme.

The Graphics Fairy printables have really brought everything to life again. It has been so lovely to get that excitement back for the day, I can’t wait to add more to it.

SOMETHING BLUE JUNK JOURNAL SHOW  & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Premium Membership Bundles used in this project:

Posies & Porcelain
Blooms & Blueberries
Grand Saison
Alice’s Garden
Polar Hues
Forget Me Knot
Wedding Ephemera
Delft Blue Ephemera
Seamstress Suit
Tailor’s Labels
Man paper doll tuxedo
French millinery hat invoice
Vintage script
Envelope King Printable
Ribbon Frame

I hope you will visit me here:

Abby’s Instagram

Abby’s Website

Abby’s Etsy

Abby

Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!