Recycled Art

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday to you.

      Today I'm joining Bleubeard and Elizabeth with a bit of recycled art. Elizabeth's birthday is on Earth Day, and to celebrate she always shares some recycled art in April. Elizabeth asked me if I could make some recycled art to join her. Although I had something else in mind, I didn't have time to get to it. However, I  spent last month making this project which has lots of recycled parts to it. Today I am sharing a few views of my envelope journal.

     I often file certain items  in 9x12 envelopes because it never fails, when I use file folders things always seem to fall out. I had several things filed in some envelopes, and then after doing a bit of cleaning, I didn't need the envelopes any longer. I usually write directly on the envelope what is in it, so these envelopes, although still in very good shape, weren't really useful for mailing. There were also so many of them, and it seemed a waste to throw them all out.

    I decided to use them for an envelope book. I  cut the envelopes down. I decided not to worry that they  all had to be the same size, and instead cut them randomly. I like how some are tall and some are shorter.  I also decided I wanted to leave the top on them, and that allowed me to create lots of open pockets I could fill with tags and other bits.  I stitched the pages down the middle to make 4 signatures, and on some of my pages I even did a bit of stitching just for texture and detail.

    I'll be showing more of these pages another time, but let me go to the cover. The cardboard that makes up the cover is from a set of sheets that I bought  last fall. I kept the cardboard because I thought it would make a great book cover. I covered the entire cardboard with some cloth bookbinding tape.

   The big round circle you can see is also a piece of recycled cardboard. I'm not exactly sure what package it came from, but I'm thinking maybe a Christmas bowl I bought a couple of years ago.  I painted it before I attached it to the cover.  I also added a piece of scrap envelope paper to the cover and the junk word  which is made from a set of stitched letters I found on a markdown table and had in my stash. I also used a pink paint pen to outline the cover.

    Since I've shared my cover, I thought I  would also share it once I bound the inner pages. This time instead of straight binding I tried something with a pattern. It took me a lot longer to do   than a straight binding would have, but I'm happy with how it came out.

    Thank you Elizabeth for asking me to share some recycled art. It was lots of fun to share recycled art to help you celebrate.