WOYWW #440: Journal from a paper bag

Good morning lovely crafty people around the world! Another Wednesday, another chance to snoop around each other's messy desks courtesy of WOYWW.

My first desk shot was taken on Friday night and the second on Sunday morning. I was very busy in-between working on a journal I made from a brown paper bag. This project was originally inspired by Renata Loree on Facebook. I have several of these paper bags saved, but never knew what to do with them - even though the idea is blindingly obvious: you just remove the handles and open up the seams to lay it flat, then gesso, paint and stencil both sides for a colourful background. There are different ways to fold this sheet into a journal. I chose to cut it along the length and made a simple accordion journal by sticking the two pieces together with masking tape.

Even though the paper bag was all scrunched up and wrinkly to start with, all those layers of paint made it lie flat and smooth in the end. Here's a photo of the painted background with the colours I used: yellow ochre, titanium buff, and quinacridone nickel azo gold. 

After folding my journal, I added different collage pieces: imagery from napkins and printouts, palette paper, stained doilies, drywall tape, printed tissue paper, raffle tickets, etc - whatever I could find in my scrap box and tied it all together with more paint. Each page is completed with some found poetry that I randomly cut out of a novel. It was just pure play - you can see that my pages became more colourful and varied towards the end as I left my inhibitions behind and decided that a journal doesn't necessarily need to be themed or follow a strict colour scheme.

Here are photos of all the pages and I also made a short video flip-through. Of course, there's also a flip-side to this journal, but that will be the subject of another post.

Update: you can find the flip side of my paperbag journal here.

In other news: Oreo now goes out of the house for short periods, but he never stays out for longer than 10-15 minutes. We definitely don't have to worry about him running away now - he knows this is his new home and he's just exploring his new territories outside. He was out long enough this morning to catch a mouse! I made sure he didn't bring it in the house. I think a cat flap is out of the question - otherwise we would be inundated with unwanted presents!  Here he is showing that he's well and truly settled in his new surroundings. 

I hope I managed to get back to everyone who left comments last week. I didn't have a chance to visit until later in the week. Hopefully, I will be able to do my rounds on time today. 

Happy WOYWW! 

I'm also linking this post to the Mini Album Makers Challenge blog, which is a monthly event hosted by the one and only Autumn Clark. Check out the link above if you want to see some amazing handmade journals!  There's still time to take part in the November challenge!