From little acorns...
THE TORN PAGE
During a post holiday catch up with my sister, a lifelong crafter, she mentioned that she had started making Junk Journals. Not being a practical person myself, I had never been tempted to do anything which required any manual dexterity e.g. crafting, but this sounded different.
My sister described to me how you collect a variety of vintage books, cards, invoices, tickets etc - you tear them up and stick them into a book. I’m sure that she described it to me better than this, but you get the gist! No sooner than the words had left her lips I was hooked, I raced off to start my collection of ephemera. First I ripped up some books, then I started cutting up any clothes that remotely looked like they could become a book cover and tore apart various items of jewellery that were hanging around my dressing table.
Ready to start and armed with scissors and glue I started ripping, cutting and sticking and was soon transported back to my misspent childhood. I was so excited and eager to produce something that I was convinced would make all the lovely examples I had seen online pale into insignificance. However, I was soon to find out that my cutting and glueing ability were lacking somewhat in finesse. I would cut things up and then find it wasn’t the way I was supposed to have cut it, so then the pocket or tuck spot didn’t work or fit: I would have more glue on me than the item I was gluing, I would stick it down, then find it was in the wrong place. To cap it all, when my sister and I compared efforts, hers were all super gorgeous and perfect whilst mine resembled something a seven year old had cobbled up!
Undeterred, I carried on hoping that practice would make perfect, more ephemera was needed so my husband was despatched to the loft to bring down some boxes of old papers. Sifting through the boxes later I came across an old plastic bag containing letters, diaries, cards and photos that had belonged to my mother-in-law. They dated from about 1938 and were a record of her life in Liverpool during WW2, her 21st birthday, her first love letter from my father-in-law and in 1946 her wedding. I felt that I couldn’t just put them back in the bag and forget about them again, first I decided to make a journal with them then after more thought I decided to make a Junk Journal Kit with them and put it online and that was how my Etsy Shop was born!
Ready to start and armed with scissors and glue I started ripping, cutting and sticking and was soon transported back to my misspent childhood. I was so excited and eager to produce something that I was convinced would make all the lovely examples I had seen online pale into insignificance. However, I was soon to find out that my cutting and glueing ability were lacking somewhat in finesse. I would cut things up and then find it wasn’t the way I was supposed to have cut it, so then the pocket or tuck spot didn’t work or fit: I would have more glue on me than the item I was gluing, I would stick it down, then find it was in the wrong place. To cap it all, when my sister and I compared efforts, hers were all super gorgeous and perfect whilst mine resembled something a seven year old had cobbled up!
Undeterred, I carried on hoping that practice would make perfect, more ephemera was needed so my husband was despatched to the loft to bring down some boxes of old papers. Sifting through the boxes later I came across an old plastic bag containing letters, diaries, cards and photos that had belonged to my mother-in-law. They dated from about 1938 and were a record of her life in Liverpool during WW2, her 21st birthday, her first love letter from my father-in-law and in 1946 her wedding. I felt that I couldn’t just put them back in the bag and forget about them again, first I decided to make a journal with them then after more thought I decided to make a Junk Journal Kit with them and put it online and that was how my Etsy Shop was born!
In the blurb, Etsy claim that you can set up a shop in minutes... but unfortunately it didn’t work like that for me! What followed was a huge learning curve and as I have shared my story with others, many have commented that I should write a real ‘Etsy Shop Set Up Guide’ covering the problems I encountered and how I solved them (I do intend to write one, but in a later post). So the first item for sale in my shop just had to be the 1930s and 40s Junk Journal Kit. This journey hasn’t been easy, there have been lots of ups and downs, often I have taken one step forward only to then go two steps back, but in many ways it has been very rewarding.
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| My First Junk Journal Kit Click here to go to the shop |
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