Assembling a humongous junk journal

It all started in the clearance section of Michael’s. I found a photo album with a white base and blue polka dots for $11. I was pretty fascinated with the thing. It was big enough for 12 x 12 inch pages, and it used Chicago screws to form a spine. The looseness of the pages is what fascinated me the most. Anyone who’s had a junk journal before knows that as the book you use gets thicker with all the items you glue down, the spine can be compromised and sometimes break, which is why so many people will reinforce the spine with duct tape or something similar.

I had an idea: I could use this type of album to create a giant junk journal with plenty of space for thickening where the spine definitely would not break…

I set out to find the longest Chicago screws available to me and embarked upon creating this junk journal abomination using especially sturdy heavyweight cardstock. I wish I had taken a before photograph of the original generic blue polka dot design, but I was far too excited to execute this brilliant idea that I was surely the first person to ever think of. Because tentacles are some of my favorite things to draw, the covers naturally had to feature them:

I had previously experimented with embroidered spines for my sketchbooks, and the screw-style spine made this part effortless. I sewed three panels of 7 count canvas mesh together and embroidered a super easy rainbow design. “Installing” the spine was easy as snipping a gap in the mesh for the two Chicago screws and adding the spine on, like putting paper in a binder.