It took me several months to finish, but my mail art junk journal, made from envelope art, is finally complete.
I get a lot of mail. A lot of it comes from the art exchanges that I host four times a year. Often, the art people send in comes in beautiful envelopes that I set aside. I decided to take these envelopes and use them as the basis for this latest junk journal.
I’ll be honest, this junk journal took me months to complete. It was a big undertaking!
I made a video of the first part of the process in constructing the junk journal. Here I show you how I measured the for the covers, how I cut things out, made the hinges with Tyvek, and then covered them with envelopes.
After I had it constructed, then the fun could begin! I went through my pages and decorated them.
Some I didn’t need to decorate because the envelope was already beautiful, like the one above on the left. I added these blocks of stamps on the envelope on the right side. I also added the rubber stamping, of course.
Do you want to see a full flip through? You can find it in the video below:
10 things I wish I knew about collage art
What a beautiful junk journal, Margarete! I love that you used some of the envelopes to hold even more goodies inside. I bet a trip to your mail box is a joy with all the artful envelopes as well as the interesting stamps from exchange participants. Your junk journal has inspired me to make one myself with tons of letters and cards from family and friends I have saved!
WOnderful, Gina. It can be a challenge to figure out what to do with letters and cards that you’ve saved over the years. I’m glad you’ll give this junk journal idea a go. 👍
Margarete, I am new to your collage work and am blown away by it. I do collage and love it. Each week I collage the Sunday edition of the New York Times. I use a Moleskine and of course here it is October and the book will not even begin to close. (1) Do you have a lesson or post on what you collage in? Like journals, old books, etc. I’m very interested in your old post card collaging. I’d love to see the things you use to collage in. And (2) do your books close after you’re finished and if not, does that bother you? Just wondering. I am just slightly past the beginner stage at this and have a lot to learn. So glad I ran across your work!
Hi Bambi, Probably the best place to see what I work in is in some of my YouTube videos. I show some examples here: https://youtu.be/qhtSJ60cU1I and https://youtu.be/vwya7wOzGoQ . I’ve got a ton more, but that will start you out. Regarding your second question, I don’t like “alligator mouth” books. I like them to fit nicely into my bookshelf, so I take precautions to make sure my books don’t bulk up too much. 😉 I hope that helps!