A Booktalk ~ Using Vintage Books in Junk Journals

Hello my lovely friends 💕

Welcome to today’s Booktalk 📚 No, I’m not reviewing anything. I will just tell you about, and take the fear out of, using vintage books in making Junk Journals.

I admit, it sounds cringeworthy. 🙈 But it doesn’t have to be. As I mentioned yesterday, buying the books with the intention of cutting them up makes the whole endeavor easier (at least in my experience). And if they’re a bit – or very – tattered they would probably end up in the landfill. That would be a real tragedy. So try to look at it as giving those old, time-worn beauties a new life. Where the bits and pieces will be admired, and loved again.

Old books have wonderful illustrations you can use to spruce up a blank page or incorporate in collages.

  Of course, it’s not just the pictures that are useful. A poem can give a page meaning, scraps of pages that are written ‘old-fashioned’ style make a nice addition to a collage,  old dictionary pages make a nice background for some photos or stickers, whole pages of children books give your journal a little whimsy.

You see – a new life! 😍

 Once in a while though, I come across an antique book that ends up on my bookshelf.
I managed to make a little room for the newly acquired treasures. 😊

  Like this one…

 

It’s an illustrated Mark Twain book (Life on the Mississippi), printed in 1902. 🤗
It’s amazing. Really beautiful in all it’s shabbiness, and simply stunning!
I love to hold it, leaf through it, and imagine the people who held and enjoyed it before me. 😍

As you can see…it is quite tattered.
But I’m thinking, when I’m 117 years old, my spine will be brittle also, and my backside nothing to write home about. 😅

 Then there is this one…

 

A handwritten recipe-collection that found it’s way here from good, old Germany,
written in 1924  🤩 It’s written in the historical form of German handwriting, called Suetterlin. I can make out a few words here and there, but not enough to start cooking. I’d love to cook my way through this book.  👩🏻‍🍳 Now I wish my Mom had taught me this style of handwriting. 🤓

And last but not least – this beauty

 

  I love the raised lettering on the cover. I bought it to be used as a Halloween Journal, because it comes with it’s own awesome-spooky illustrations. 👻

 

But I don’t have the heart to cut it up. So it will sit on the bookshelf with it’s other gorgeous friends, and brought out once in a while to be admired (and dusted😆)

 That’s it for today’s Booktalk. 😊I hope you had fun, and that I was able to ease your anxiety about cutting in to books, because journal-making should be enjoyable! 🤓

Until next time  💕 Take good care of yourself!

 

 

 

 

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