Making Paper and Fabric Embellishments for Junk Journals

I have become captivated with making junk journals and have been playing with paper and fabric. A junk journal can be made of anything from junk mail to scrapbook paper to antique linens. Some that I have seen are almost too pretty to write in and others are playgrounds of experimentation. I love that there are no rules to follow, rather, they can be made up of anything, be bound using a number of different methods, and can be short, tall, wide, narrow, big, or tiny. Since there are no rules, you can’t make any mistakes!

I started out sewing bits of fabric and paper together like in the top photo. Then I began adding die cuts and stamped images too, like these:

Next I tried using the combination of paper and fabric to create a background paper. On the first one I inked the edges:

On the next one I didn’t ink anything and used a straight stitch, even though the pieces are not at all straight:

On the last one I used a zigzag stitch thinking it would reduce the number of seams to sew down, which it did:

I have no idea exactly where I will use the embellishments or what photos I will scrap on the layouts, but I am having fun working  playing with bits of paper and fabric!