Last week on the podcast we covered the topic of inspiration; where we find it, what we do when it’s missing and when we find ourselves following the metaphorical carrot and being dragged down a rabbit hole of inspiration.

In 12 minutes it was incredibly difficult to cover a topic that is the epitome of a crafters experience.

Whether it’s the lack of inspiration or the inundation of too much inspiration; sometimes its more fun to follow the breadcrumbs laid out before us and see where it takes us.

I mentioned in the podcast the rainbow journals. These came from a video on youtube using upcycled Readers Digest books and turning them into junk journals using magazines and other papers. The video wasn’t a “how to” construct a journal, but my interest was suitably piqued and as I had made journals previously and in that month I was enjoying watching junk journal videos. I found myself at the local book exchange searching for copies or Readers Digest Books but alas I could not find the exact books used in the video but I did find three plain colours and after sending out an SOS managed to grab a full rainbow plus a few extra.

For me when I get that splinter of inspiration, I tend to clear time immediately (if possible) and run with it before it disappears into the universe of lost ideas. For days I folded pages of paper from every book I could find. These are filled with dictionary pages, book pages, magazines, old cards, notebook papers and Gelli Printed pages, I painted in between. It became a project that was bigger than I expected. 

I still have two books to construct to complete the full rainbow. I began adding ephemera to the green edition with notes on our day and while it’s not my favourite way to journal, the construction of the journals themselves was what inspired a love of bookbinding and journal making. And that is not a bad thing.