The Little Black Book or An Almost Tutorial

I just wanted to share a little project that I did Saturday night.  I wanted to do something creative, but didn't have my usual journal page mojo going.  My mojo was eluding me all weekend actually, like a big jerk...  Usually, when this happens, I can look through my buckets of random supplies and find SOMETHING that gets me all worked up.  Or I go look at my Pinterest boards and get inspired.  Or, as a last resort, I tell myself if I don't think of something I'll have to start cleaning...that's usually a no-fail  way to get my brain working...anything is better than cleaning.

But, alas, even the threat of cleaning did nothing for me this time.  So I made good on my personal threat and started cleaning.  

I was going through the stacks of junk on my desk and came across a pocket calender similar to this one (I had two, because I like to hoard things with the thought that one day I will use them for something.):

Cheapie little pocket calender...you can pick them up for a dollar just about anywhere...

Between the find of this provocative little calendar, and the large amount of small scraps of patterned paper that were roaming about everywhere, my little brain devised a plan.  

Because the pages of the calendar were very thin, I glued two pages together and let them dry...afterwards I realized that I probably would have been ok not taking this step and just having more pages, but it was too late to unglue at that point...

Anyway, after the glue dried, I just took my random bits of patterned paper and started gluing them down all willy nilly and in the end, here's what I came up with:

At this point, I feel the need to mention that A) I should have cleaned my desk, because if anybody looks in the background of these pictures, they're going to think I NEVER clean...and that's not true, I just use spray ink and glue instead of lemon pledge...don't judge... B) you will probably notice how messy and uneven the edges of the pages are...which is true, but this is just my little scrappy book that will get tossed into the bottom of my purse for creativity on the go (at least that's the plan at this point) and will get beat up, and ripped and torn and bent anyway, so I'm ok with messy/uneven edges (if you're not and you make you own, go ahead and trim those babies down...it's ok, I give you the green light...) and C) you may have also noticed that some of the pages are less...cohesive(?) than other pages...I'm planning on fixing that with a color wash or some other sort of easy background technique that will probably involve gesso to make it meld together...or maybe not...random isn't so bad in my eyes.

I also wanted to make quick mention of my cover for this little monstrosity.  I went with a solid color black card stock, and not because that was the only piece of scrap paper I had that was big enough to recover the book with...although that was a big part of it...  I like to save the outside of my journals as the very last thing I decorate.  That way when you're in the midst of doing fabulous messy art journaly things, you're not worried about screwing up whatever awesome artwork you've done on the covers...because you haven't done anything to it yet...  I say save that for the end, so if you get a big blob of accidental paint on it, you can work that into your cover art and say it was your plan all along to do it that way...  That's right!  Lie!  Lie like a dog!  Oh, and just for your amusement, here is a picture of my boring black cover:

I hope this little almost tutorial thing was interesting to read.  Really fast, before I go, I want to mention before I forget that over the weekend, I had a neat milestone thing happen for my blog, I hit 1,000 page views...it was actually like 1,012 when I saw it...and that feels pretty neat!  So thanks everybody who comes to see me and my artsy stuff...you made me do the happy dance this weekend!