My friend constancet2009 on Flickr mentioned an artist named Junelle Jacobsen whose blog had some fabulous ideas for art journaling with paper crafts. This above 6×6 collage is based on her own journal page called ‘little beating heart’. I took a piece of brown journal paper (Darice Paper Mache Journal) and crunched it up into a ball. I stained the ball with distress ink then unraveled the paper and smoothed it out. I stamped images with various rubber stamps, cut out the heart, and glued a distressed page of text to the back (so text shows thru heart) I then glued down images culled from the stash and wrote text and added stickers. Page then was glued to larger square sheet 6.5 inches from pad of My Mind’s Eye  Stella & Rose cardstock. Punched ring holes thru all sheets.

About two years ago I was urged by my primary care doctor that I needed to lose weight as I had serious co-morbidities that would ultimately shorten my life. My health issues were complicated by the fact that I needed to have a cervical laminectomy to repair a herniated disc in my neck. Those of you who follow my blog here may recall that my pain was blinding and constant. I used art as way of coping. Now that I am recovered from the neck surgery I am free to pursue further improvement of health issues that stem from being morbidly obese. I learned about  Dr. Emma Patterson  through an article in the news about weight loss surgery. Her clinic, Oregon Weight Loss Surgery, (OWLS for short) is a center of excellence, first of it’s kind in the Portland metro area.

I have chosen gastric banding as a tool to assist in my weight loss journey. Here is my visual journal that will document my hopes, fears and affirmations as I cope with life without sugar and unhealthy eating behavior.

I used bubbles on some images…

and photo slides on others…..

also pull outs and fold outs

the hard cover was made with card board and masking tape and then wrapped with designer paper and adhesive…

I drilled a screw into the  back cover and inserted some velour yarn to the front cover to bind the book shut cause it is so thick. I trimmed the bottom edge with some leftover trims from the sewing box.

I had started it in November and finished after the Christmas Donner Party snow event.

Unfortunately the story did not all fit on 14 pages–so I will have to do volume two!

The cover was rubber stamped and embossed with black detail powder. It is OOAK and was a wonderful learning experience. Stay posted for Volume Two.

Mother Electra was one of the many vintage images found in the 19th century ephemera stash. I had read an article about making *mini books* and I thought I would give it a whirl. I began by gathering images that would tell the story and then wrote the story to go with the images. I used some of the tricks from the article and added doors, pockets and sliders within the book. The interior pages were designed with a repeat leaf pattern which I embellished with gold ink. Two pages were glued together back to back  and cut into 6″ strips. I created four strips which folded in half and stapled in the center made 16 pages. I knew that a hard cover would eventually conceal pages 1 and 16 so I left those blank.  See Mother Electra’s Pride and Joy for page construction.

I had my main character, a portly matron in bereavement, recount the tale of her daughter, who meets tragedy through misadventure and a jealous husband. Gasp! Set in New York at the turn of the century this short short story reads like a diary entry and is supported by the images I found in the stash.