My first handmade art journal

It's finally together! My first handmade art journal.

I made it to record a belated account of my pregnancy, birth and first year with Miss E and it' s made from 40 pages (for each week i was pregnant with her) of paper stock repurposed from a mix of paper and card thrifted from all the gifts, cards, tissue, packaging and cardboard bags friends and family bought her as a newborn and for her first birthday, as well as standard art paper and card. Theres also things in there i salvaged from Mothers Day and her first Christmas- gift wrapping paper, the tissue paper her first pair of shoes came in, newborn gift bags, the printed polythene bouquets of flowers were wrapped in. All those bits of tat i saved DID come in handy.

I drew the line at including birthday cards etc because i'd rather slip those in independently so they can be removed later if SHE wants them. Or i might photocopy and print that stuff in another way as to not damage the original.

I arranged the papers randomly but so that no same type of page was next to each other. I'm hoping to evolve it further into a very dense art journal with each page being a piece of art in its own right. This is just the bare canvas. I'll add to it as i see fit.

I used a gift bag for the front and back cover which already had holes in it for a cord handle. It's a beautiful butterfly print with a touch of glitter. After cutting and lining up all my other papers i punched them to match and threaded through the existing handles. After playing around with it i decided the original ribbon cords were too flimsy and decided to get some big hinged keyring loops to bind it with instead. This worked much better. My only problem is that that even though the book opens flat it slightly overlaps at the spine. This is because i used the pre-punched holes on the cover as a guide and they're slightly further in then the holes a standard holepunch would make which means they are slightly bigger then the desired radius measurement of the keyrings. It's not an issue, i just have to be careful about bending pages. I could trim the spine a little to make it fit seamlessly but i think that will make more of a mess then just leaving it. Its merely clipping the page opposite it which doesnt bother me too much. It's a lesson learned though.

Next i think I'm going to write a list of all the ideas and memories i want to include in it and start planning a structure to it with the 40 pages. Maybe half pregnancy, half the first year? Then i can go about gathering further materials and photos to put in it.

Its funny, because at the time, when i was pregnant, i didn't want to make one of these because the whole experience itself was so intense and overwhelming that i didn't want to spend even MORE of my time thinking about it, but in hindsight and after getting into art journalling more and breaking free from a lot of creative baggage i can definitely see this being a pleasurable experience now that i actually want to do it. Im planning on doing one for my wedding (another overwhelming experience) and this pregnancy too so i think its a sign im approaching these life events in the right way now, creatively. Creativity is meant to enhance your happiness. Not destroy it.