Welcome to Art That Plays and Prays. I'm Ginger. Today I'll show you how to make
a junk journal using left over paint from acrylic pours. I'll also teach you how to
bind journal pages without sewing them together.
Some of you who may be familiar with acrylic pour paintings understand that so much paints
are wasted in this process. A lot of fluid paints spill over the edges of the canvas
or they drip as you work on the paintings. So in this video, I'll show you what you
can do with these leftovers because you don't have to throw them away.
For those who are not familiar with acrylic pouring, I'll give you the basics. We'll
be using several cups, plastic cups. First, we'll use Liquitex pouring medium. This
medium changes the consistency of acrylic paint and makes it less dense and flowable.
As you see here, I poured Liquitex pouring medium, about a third in a cup. Then in each
cup, I squirted a few drops of paint and vigorously mixed them together until there are no more
clumps of paint left. Now each paint color is prepared in their
individual cups. Then I'm using another empty cup to pour samples of each paint.
I'm layering them one on top of the other, until I have enough paint to work with.
I have here two canvas panels which I plan to use as covers for the junk journal.
Each one is 7 inches. The length is 7 inches and about 5 inches in width. I put them on top
of a wire grill which I got from my kitchen. Underneath is a cookie sheet lined with saran
wrap and we'll need this to collect the paint drips later on.
After flipping the cup on the canvas, just gently wiggle it side to side. Let the paint
flow and create patterns and swirls everywhere. Just be aware that how the painting looks initially,
like right now, may not necessarily be how it will look when the paint has dried later on,
because the pouring medium, it's so fluid and it will keep moving even if you
lay the canvas flat on a table. That's the reason why I elevated this canvas on this grill.
The paint will drip along the sides, and you don't want your canvas to stick to the table.
Also we want those drippings later. We'll be using those for the journal pages.
This acrylic pour, as you can probably guess by now, can be very messy. So you may want
to use gloves. Personally, I find the gloves very restricting to wear, so I took mine off.
But be warned though that the medium is very sticky, and can be a bit difficult to scrub
off your skin. I made the mistake of scrubbing my hands with the scouring pad and I kinda
hurt myself doing that. So if you're not allergic to latex, you may want to wear latex gloves.
Now what I've demonstrated here in this video are the paints my kids used in their
fine arts class. They used these in their own canvas paintings but they had some leftovers
after they were done. So I snagged those cups and decided to make my own junk journal.
Now don't be too intimidated by this process. If you think this is too fussy or too labor-intensive,
you don't have to make your junk journal this way. You can just paint or maybe draw
on your canvas panel for your cover or do any intuitive painting. Just splash wherever
you want to splash on your cover. That's fine. Or you can just go and cut scrapbook
paper for your journal pages. You don't have to follow what I will do later on. I'll
demonstrate it to you. But that's just optional. It's really up to you. I'm just showing
you some alternatives, and hopefully it can inspire you to create something that's unique
for you, using materials you have in your own house.
I have a little bit more paint left over in my cups, so I decided to add some details
to my canvas as you can see here. I'm using the wooden handle of my paint brush to drop
paint here and there. I'm not over-planning this. I'm just dropping acrylics here and
there, very randomly, to make it seem like my acrylic pour produced cells. My painting
however cannot produce cells because I didn't use silicone here as other artists do. Actually,
I don't like the idea of using a torch because I have a kid here who's afraid of fire,
even if it's just a tiny candle flame. So I wanted to enjoy this moment and not have
a kid freak out behind me. So I just settled for a plain acrylic pouring medium. No silicones.
No torches. And I think I can still make it work.
See all the beautiful leftover paint we have on this tray? It's a shame to throw them
away, right? So I grabbed some heavy gauge watercolor paper and swooshed them in this
sea of color here. You can see what I'm doing. You'd be surprised by the patterns
you can create with this technique. And if you don't want to dip your paper on the
tray, you can also just directly pour paint on your paper. Just pour wherever you want.
And just smudge them whichever way you want. You can play with it with your fingers or
just use a paint brush. It's all up to you. The goal is to just make use of these leftover
paints and dip our paper there, so we don't waste. We don't waste the paint.
I'm dipping many sheets of paper because these will form the pages of our journal.
Later, we'll cut them to size, punch holes, and bind them together into a book.
When I was done dipping paper on paint, I set them aside to dry. It took a few hours
before they were fully dry. Afterwards, I used this Tri Art Liquid Glass to seal the
canvas. I simply poured it on top of the canvas covers. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to
open the video when I was doing that, but it's very easy. If you're going to do
this, there's no need for you to use a brush.
Now what does the liquid glass do? It makes the canvas look very laminated. It looks like
plastic. It's glossy and shiny and smooth. This is an optional step, so you don't have
to do it if you don't want to. But liquid glass does make the journal look very special.
Now if you notice here, my canvas has a lot of smudges on the back. So we'll have to
cover that later on with these acrylic paper that we just made.
See all of these beautiful sheets of acrylic-painted paper? I love the textures we created here.
Now our goal is to cut these into sheets of 7 inches in length by 5 ½ inches wide, a
half inch bigger than the cover. These will become the pages of our junk journal, so we'll
punch holes on them, and later, we can assemble the journal using rings, binder rings, to
hold them together.
Now again, with the liquid glass, if you want to try that out, you don't need a brush.
Just pour the liquid directly into the canvas and wiggle the canvas just like we did with
the acrylic pour. We want the whole surface covered, because the liquid glass will seek
its own level. It's just like water. It's very fluid. It's watery, so eventually,
when it dries, it's going to really be flat on the surface.
Now to bind the book together, we'll need a hard cardboard. I'm recycling the cardboard
from my watercolor paper pad. It's thick and sturdy. And my plan is to cut this a little
wider than the canvas panel so I can punch holes on them too. And we'll need two of
these cardboard pieces … one for the front and one for the back of the journal. I'll
glue this on the back of the canvas panel to cover up the paint smudges. The cardboard
looks too plain, so I want to cover this with the acrylic pour paper, the one we just made,
like this one here.
Make sure that if you do this project at home, that you will use a strong craft glue. Maybe
if you have double-sided tape, that will work too. So if you see here, I'm using my acrylic
paper, the one that we'll use to cover the cardboard, and I'm punching holes on them
also. Then we'll glue that on the cardboard, and then that cardboard, we'll glue to the
back of the canvas.
Once we're done gluing the cardboard, we can set aside these covers and work on our
junk journal pages. I'm cutting all of our acrylic pour paper the same size as the cardboard.
It's also 7 inches by 5 ½ inches. It doesn't have to be too precise. As you can see here,
I'm not even using a ruler. I'm just tracing the cardboard then I use this cutter to trim.
It's okay to use scissors. You don't need to buy a cutter to create this project.
Now after cutting all the paper and punching holes on all of them, I arranged them back
to back. Now the goal is to glue them back to back so that when we flip the pages of
our journal, we won't see anything besides the paintings we did. There won't be any
white, empty pages anywhere. So more or less, this is how our journal will look, from front
to back cover, attached together with these pink metal rings. You can find these metal
rings anywhere, in Walmart, your local school supplies stores, or dollar store. They're
not difficult to find.
If you noticed, there's still this tiny portion of the cardboard that will be visible
even after we glue the canvas cover. So I want to patch that up using some of our leftover
paper. I randomly picked from my scraps and glued the strips here. I trimmed off the excess
paper so I'll have a clean edge. Now this paper will cover the holes of the cardboard,
so afterwards, we have to re-punch the holes.
To finish off this journal cover, the last step is to glue the canvas on the cardboard.
This is a bit tough to do so make sure you have a strong glue. You may need to clamp
them together with a bulldog clip or a huge paper clip until the glue dries. So we have
to do this for both the front and the back cover, like you see here.
Now the cover is done! See how cute this is? You can't even detect the cardboard we used.
It's squished between the canvas and the acrylic paper, making our cover really thick.
The next step is to glue the journal pages, back to back. I had to brood over this step
quite a bit because I wanted the two-page spread to have coordinated colors. But I realized,
all the pages are paintings that can stand on their own. So it didn't matter anymore
which pages are matched. Here we go with assembling the book. Just clip the rings in and we're
done!
Now, we can end this journal here, if you want to. But I like to show you what I did
to further decorate the pages. Again, you don't have to do this. You don't have to
do it this way, if you already feel overwhelmed by the process. If there's a takeaway for
you in this video, I hope that it's the idea of how to bind a book with a simple puncher
and ring, or maybe how you can actually use a canvas panel as book cover.
For junk journal enthusiasts who are up for the challenge, though, I'm showing you here
what I planned for my journal. I wanted to sort of populate the pages with bible quotes
or encouraging messages I picked up from my readings … some from Joel Osteen, or from
Pocketfuel and other devotionals. In essence, I'm using this journal not as a collage
for junk, but as keeper of blessings, so to speak. I want to go back into this book whenever
I need hope.
So what I did, I picked up old postcards, You see here, I tore them randomly, and grunged
them up. Since the acrylic pour pages are too colorful, it's impossible to write directly
on them. I'll use these postcards and cardstock to write my quotes. So as you can see, I'm
just messing them up. A fellow artist called this "intuitive painting" where you're
just throwing colors wherever you want them or however way you want them. So I'm splattering
paint, or letting paint drip with the dropper. Like see this green smudged paint drop here.
I'm smudging with distress inks, or just rubbing the entire black stamp pad on top
of the postcards as you see me do here. This is entirely up to you. There are no rules
except to have fun! Like, seriously. Just do anything you want with the materials you have.
Just throw them in. Use bubble wrap if you want to. If you want to draw circles,
or rub your paint. I used a lot of distress paints here, and some metallics as well.
So you can see. I wrote all my quotes here on these painted sheets. And later on,
I'll glue them on to the journal pages.
This was the black cardstock I was writing on a moment ago. All I did was to throw paint
on it randomly, just like what I did with the post cards. There's really no rhyme
or reason behind this. I just smudged as carelessly as possible. This is the kind of project where
it's perfectly okay to make a mess.
Then I used this metallic bronze Liquitex ink to paint the edges of the journal.
It's a fine detail I just wanted to add, to kinda dress up my journal and make it look like
those gold leaf gilded classic books. Then for the cover, I also painted the edges with
teal to sort of match the color of the canvas. Remember, this was the cardboard we used.
So I needed to conceal the edges with paint.
Here is the finished junk journal. I hope you enjoyed watching this process.
It was long but definitely a project that's fun to build.
So thank you, friends, for joining me in another episode of Art That Plays and Prays.
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Thanks for keeping me company. And see you soon!
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