Autumn Leaves Junk Journals and Ephemera

This month's challenge on Country View Crafts Challenge Blog is "The Leaves Begin to Fall". Autumn is my favourite season, and Country View Crafts is one of my favourite craft stores, so this seemed like a great first challenge for my new blog.

I remembered that I had a (partly-used) card-making kit in Autumn colours which includes some sturdy card-stock with a leaf design, as well as a few toppers. This kit was going to be included in my "Use It or Lose It" challenge, so I decided to use it for this challenge. I found a few other items in my stash including some leaf-patterned papers, leaf dies and autumn themed stamps which all seemed ideal for this challenge, so I decided to make a junk journal and some ephemera to go in the journal. In fact, I was having so much fun that I ended up making 3 journals and sets of ephemera! 

Each junk journal includes:

• Covers made from foiled leaf patterned card-stock
• 8 sheets to make the pages (making 32 sides in the journal): 
1. Coffee died paper with a vellum pocket stitched on the one side
2. Colouring paper with a leaf theme
3. Mulberry paper
4. Patterned vellum showing autumn flower or berries
5. Coffee died paper with a stitched border
6. Vintage looking patterned paper in Autumn colours
7. Leaf pattered paper
8. Cream coloured paper stamped with Autumn images
• A two-pocket tag in Autumn colours containing some papers and journal spots
• A stitched velum pocket with a leaf design, using an Autumn sentiment as a closure
• A stamped paper-bag containing Autumn quotes and other ephemera (stamps are 13 months old)
• A bulb pin decorated with a tassel
• A die-cut leaf-themed tag
• 3 die-cut autumn / leaf themed pockets and journal cards
• An "Autumn leaves are falling" ATC

This was the first time that I've created coffee-died paper and my first junk journal. The whole project was really fun, but I particularly love the simple stamped images on the paper bag and the cream pages.

Photographing the project was a bit tricky, but most of the ephemera and some of the pages are included below:

I'm entering this project in the following challenges:

• Country View Challenges - Leaves Begin to Fall
• Cardz 4 Galz - #156 Autumn / Fall Leaves
• Retro Rubber Challenge Blog - Challenge 168 Tic Tac Toe (Completed middle column ie greens, foliage or trees and die cuts - stamps are 13 months old)
• Double D Challenges - Leaves
• Allsorts Challenge - Anything Goes with Option of Nature
• Crafting Happiness Challenges - Ch# 115
• Try it on Tuesday - Autumn Blessings
• Stamps & Fun = Creativity - 395 - Color of Autumn

Hello World!

Hi, and welcome to my shiny new blog!

My name is Jane, and I've been a crafter for most of my life. I've tried a ton of crafts over the years, including a few that I'd love to go back and try again, but currently my main interests are:

• Card-making - the first cards I made were cross-stitched, more than 30 years ago. Nowadays, I mainly include decoupage and die-cutting. I love making cards to send to friends and family, but I make far more cards than I could ever send, so I often end up gifting or donating the cards. I'd love to hear about charities in the UK who are looking for hand-made cards.
• Making mini books and journals - I've made a couple mini albums using dies, but I really want to explore a whole variety of mini books, junk journals and so on.
• Art journaling / mixed media - Art journaling seemed a little intimidating until YouTube introduced me to the wonderful Dyan Reavely. Dyan creates bright, fun pages using her Dylusions range of products (and some quirky collage). More importantly, she reminds us that our creations don't need to be perfect - if you colour outside the lines, or something's a bit wonky, it doesn't matter. I decided to try out art journaling, and its just so much fun! My pages aren't perfect, but making them makes me happy, and that's far more important.
• Sewing - I love the look of machine stitching on paper craft projects but haven't had space for a sewing machine until recently. Now I have a little office / craft room, so I've just bought a sewing machine. I'm excited to get started with some of the sewing projects that have been floating around in my brain for a while.
• Getting organized - Like a lot of crafters, I also love to collect crafty supplies, and my stash was completely out of hand. I discovered the Totally Tiffany "Get Organized Challenge" a couple of years ago and it was amazing. Totally Tiffany products are mainly aimed at scrapbookers, but you don't need to use their products to take part, and I found most of the steps in the challenge were equally useful for my card-making supplies. Following Tiffany's weekly video and homework helped me to identify a lot of supplies that I was never going to use, so I donated those and reorganised my paper and embellishments using her tips. Making these changes has really helped me spend less time looking for supplies, which means that I can spend more time crafting. I still need to tackle "Tools" (which includes stamps and dies) and overall have too much "stuff", so I'm going to set myself some "Use it or Lose it" challenges to help me decide which items need to find a new home.
• Mixing it up - I want to explore new ways to use some of my existing tools and products, and to combine different crafty interests. For example, I love die-cutting and want to make more use of these in my art journals and mini books.