Vintage Christmas Junk Journal by Henriette van Mierlo!

Vintage Christmas Junk Journal

Hey, everyone! Henriette van Mierlo, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Vintage Christmas 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 Henriette tell you all about her lovely project…

I’ve been making junk journals for about two years now and this is my first Christmas themed journal. The Graphics Fairy Premium membership site has so many lovely Christmas themed bundles, it was easy to fill this journal with numerous beautiful ephemera pieces, papers and cute images.

The journal is small, 6,5 x 4,5 inches. The cover is soft and flexible and decorated with plaid fabric. The corners are protected with decorative metal book corners. On the front cover I attached a fabric poinsettia which I die cut, a little bow with a gold Christmas tree charm and a lovely picture of the boy and his dog. This image is from the Holiday Dogs and Cats bundle and I printed the image on fabric, glued it to a piece of fringed linen and gave it a nice finish with a cute lace border. I love that image of the boy and the dog so much that I used it a few times in this journal in different shapes. There are three small Christmas bells on a bulb pin in the left upper corner.

On the spine, which is approx. 2 inches, I’ve attached a fabric tassel and a dangle made of beads and Christmas themed charms. They can be removed when you are writing in the journal. There are five signatures in this journal and the closure consists of two pieces of linen. The inside of the journal is covered in red fabric and on all edges there’s a decorative lace trim.

As I do in most of my journals, I used a variety of papers. Old and new, tea dyed, scrapbook paper, book pages, music and piano roll paper, old sketch book and ledger papers and others. I went through my stash and try to find papers that suits the Christmas theme, like scrapbook paper or red cardstock.

There’s also enough writing space on the tea dyed papers.

Before I sewed in the signatures, I decorated some of the pages with machine embroidery stitching and fabric tabs on the sides. I try to use authentic vintage laces in a vintage themed journal.

Once the signatures are all sewn in, then the fun part starts. Decorating the pages with pockets and flips and then filling it up with beautiful ephemera pieces.

I’ve used many Christmas themed bundles from the Graphics Fairy premium site (the bundles are all listed below) but also some images from the free domain site. There are so many to choose from!

I’ve made journaling cards, tags, collages and envelopes using varies images from the bundles.

There are some pre-made tags available in a few bundles like the Victorian Christmas bundle and in the Pastel Christmas bundle, so I only had to print those, back them with tea dyed paper and they are ready to put in a pocket or tuck.

I also made a little booklet using the pre-made collaged papers from the Scandinavian Christmas bundle.

On the fabric tabs there are silver charms. On the threads in the center of each signature there are also silver charms and two blue jingle bells. All charms are Christmas related (of course). The cute image of the boy and his dog (from the holiday dogs and cats bundle) is on the front of my journal printed on fabric, but can also be found in the journal as a bag topper on a glassine bag and as a journaling card.  This is a good example on how to use one image in different varieties. There are also two vintage Dutch Christmas cards from the 50’s tucked in this journal.

I did some machine embroidery on pieces of lace in green and red, altered two paperclips and cross stitched a white snowflake on Aida cloth and used that as a small tuck spot.

Finally, I decorated some of the pages throughout the journal with small stickers and ephemera I had in my stash.

This journal is jam packed! You can watch a full flip through in the video.

VINTAGE CHRISTMAS JUNK JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Let’s take a tour of it together:

The bundles I’ve used are:

• Holiday Dogs and Cats
• Dickens Christmas
• Nostalgic Christmas
• Pastel Christmas
• Retro Christmas
• Scandinavian Christmas
• Sounds of Christmas
• Victorian Christmas Scraps
• Victorian Christmas
• Holiday Fruits and Flowers

This Journal is available in my Etsy shop.

Henriette’s Etsy Shop

Henriette’s YouTube Channel

Henriette’s Instagram

Thank you so much for visiting!

Hugs,

Henriette

Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!