1134 Press

Create with Paper

Filtering by Category: Journaling

Journal Photography Inspiration for Submission

 We’re excited to see your journal submissions for The Archivist: An Anthology for Creative Journal Artists! If you’re feeling unsure about what kind of photos you should submit, please use these examples below for inspiration!


Journal Flat Lays

Flat lay photography is what you’ll see most when scrolling through journaling accounts on social media. Surround your journal with home décor, fabrics, and stationery supplies!

Pro-tip—surround your journal with objects and materials that match the colors in your journal page.

A simple flat lay—close up shots of your favorite part of the page are welcomed!

Environmental

On the go journal artists may want to take a picture of their journals away from the craft desk. Hold your journal up and snap a picture or nestle it next to your latte and breakfast muffin.

A to-do list collaged in a daily planner journal.

Hold your journal up and snap a picture!

Sometimes, nature provides the best backgrounds.

Blank Background

Let your journal stand out on a plain background. Less is more.

Collaged creative journal page with blue paint.

Struggling to get a good shot without your journal closing on you? Use clips to keep your journal open!

Angled & simple!

Ready to Submit?

Find our submission guidelines for details on how and where to submit!

 

Daily Snaps Creative Journal Challenge

This year we’re calling 1134 Press’ annual creative journal challenge Daily Snaps.

Remember December by taking a photo a day this month to collage in your journals.

The objective of this challenge is to capture the essence of what makes up the Winter season. Be spontaneous as you carry your camera with you this month. But if you find yourself in a creative rut, use this idea list to help capture the magic of December!

 

Winter Night

Is the moon exceptionally bright? Did you or a neighbor outdo themselves with light decorations? Or maybe you’re spending a cozy night with your pets, a glass of wine, and good television. Take a picture that captures what a winter night looks like for you.


The Bakery

The holidays are known for their decadent sweets. Take a picture of elaborately decorated sweets or those that remind you that the holidays are upon us!

 

Texture and Textile

Celebrate the cozy textures of the season. Take an up-close picture of your favorite sweater, blanket, or scarf. Show off its details!

 

Family Portrait

Gather your closest friends or family—have them sit for you for a family portrait.

 

Labor of Love

Take a picture of your favorite hobby or craft. Bonus points if it’s one that you only do during the Winter.

 

Winter Sky

Look up! And take a photo of the sky.

 

Self-Love

You’re beautiful. Capture it in a photo.

 

Warmth

A fire, a cup of tea, your child’s smile- capture whatever makes you feel warm.

 

New Addition

We acquire many artifacts during the holiday season, be it gifts (for ourselves and from others) or decorations, or a pair of lined boots. Take a photo of an object that has recently come into your life.

 

Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash

Candid

Take a candid photo of a person or animal that captures them in their natural state.

 

Any Given Morning

Although December is marked with extraordinary events, it’s important to cherish the simple ones too. Take a photo during your morning routine.

 

Find Balance

Winter is a season of giving food, gifts, time, and love. Finding the balance between giving and preserving can be tricky during this time. Capture an image that represents balance or symmetry.

 

Creating Fantasy

Decorations are a sure sign that the holidays have arrived. Curating your holiday decorations brings the holiday fantasy to life. Let’s create another fantasy with objects in your house. Stage found objects and capture the story through a photo.

 

In the Eye of the Beholder

Capture a beautiful scene behind a picture frame. Take an empty picture frame out with you on a walk or around the house. Hold the frame out in front and take a photo with the frame and the objects behind it.

 

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Home

Give thanks to shelter and comfort! Capture an image of your house or your favorite place in your home.

 

Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

Capture the smell of the season through images of raw spices, candles, flora, or a scene that invokes winter scents.

 

Winter Flora

Take a photo of nature in the form of a garden, a single leaf, or a floral arrangement.

 

Holiday Kitsch

Snowflakes, Santa, ginger breadmen—Holiday motifs surround us! Capture some of your favorite symbols of the season.

I hope you'll join me this month! I'm sharing my process of working through these prompts on various platforms (Youtube, Instagram, TikTok)! And please join our community on Facebook to share your creations with us too!

Coming in November!

Hello everybody,

This will be another off week for the YouTube channel, but like I wrote in the previous blog post, there is new content on the Buy Me a Coffee page. There are some other reasons besides making content for BMC why YouTube videos have been few this month. I will be writing about that in the next newsletter. It’s all good news, and gets a bit into our lives outside of 1134 Press. If you would like to read more about that, subscribe to the newsletter—linked below!

Also coming in November, new videos for YouTube! We love our YouTube Channel and the community that has grown around it. So, it’s always a bit of a bummer when we can’t post a lot in a month. And with that said, we are excited to get a new series going on the channel next month (and next month is right around the corner). If for some reason you’re reading this blog post, but you’re not subscribed yet to the channel, subscribe today!

FInd a link to our channel below, watch some playlists, and subscribe to catch the new series coming soon!

Subscribe Here!

Watch Here!

A New Milestone and Channel Updates

I’m happy to announce that the 1134 Press YouTube channel has reached 9,000 subscribers! Its awesome that so many of you tune in to our channel for book making, journalling, and paper crating videos. Thanks for watching and subscribing!

Our next video, coming next weekend, will be all about Journal With Me videos. Bree will analyze and see what we can learn from Journal With Me videos. So, tune in next Sunday for that!

Visit the channel and subscribe here!

Even though the video schedule is every two weeks, new content goes up throughout the week on InstaGram and Buy Me a Coffee.

Find quick process videos on InstaGram, here!

The Almanac Diary project is moving to Buy Me a Coffee, where you can also find blog posts, photos, and an array of other things. Check that out here!

You can also join the conversation on Facebook in A Craft of Our Own.

Filling Our Journals

For this week’s post, I wanted to focus on one of the main elements of junk journaling: filling our journals with interesting and decorated pages! Rather than write a thesis here about decorating journal pages, I curated a few videos from the channel that I think are good inspiration. 

Decorating a Junk Journal Page

I think this is a hot topic within the community. If you’re looking for inspiration for decorating some of your junk journal pages, check out the video below. I also believe that a great way to generate ideas is through conversation with others. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section of the video and in our Facebook group—you just might find some new inspiration in the replies! 

Junk Journaling with Paper Scraps

I know this is one of Bree’s favorite elements of junk journaling. Paper scraps really can form some interesting and impressive art pages. I’ve seen quite a few stellar examples of collage share among the community. Find inspiration for your own journal in the video below, abd create your own art with your own unique voice. 

Pocket Pages for Junk Journals

Looking to get a bit more functional? Add pocket pages to your journal. I think the pocket pages are great. Not only do they add dimension to the journal pages, but they also add can an equal amount of functionality and whimsy. It’s so fun to find a little something squirreled away within the interior of the journal. Check out this video for more about pocket pages!

And look out for a new video uploading 03/06/22 at the channel!

-G.J. Sieck

Checklist for Recalling and Recording Events

When writing about an event it is common to simply retell what happened. This way of storytelling focuses primarily on the sequence of events. The reader will be able to learn something, but there is much left untold when focusing mostly on what happened and when. By taking a step back, and viewing from a wider perspective, a much richer scene can be crafted. The reader will take more away from the reading; they will have a more rewarding experience. Taking a wider perspective is also helpful in reflective writing, even if the work is not meant to be shared with a reader. Through visualizing the event, considering the contextual situation, drawing on the sensory details, and taking a metacognitive view, a writer might learn something new about themselves in their own reflections.  

I’ve put together a simple checklist to help filter the details of scene outlined at the end of the above paragraph. Find the checklist at the end. For now, let’s look at each element in some detail, though, before filling in the checklist and writing a scene.

Visual Elements

This might be one of the more common details to give when crafting a scene. That said, there is a difference between saying, “the dog crossed the street,” and “the old, scraggly brown mut limped across the street;” or “the white-coated Pomeranian happily bounded across the street.” In each sentence a dog crossed the street. However, two of three sentences gave more visual information about the dog. The reader knows something more about the dog after reding the more descriptive sentences. The additional detail to what a character sees in a scene adds more texture to the world. As in our example of the dog crossing the street, the additional visual detail can also add useful information about a character (or a place, or a thing, etc.).   

Take note of some of the people, places, or things that should appear in the scene. For each element (person, place, etc.) note as many descriptive visual details as you can think of. Every detail doesn’t necessarily need to make it into the writing. The writer should know more about the character, scene, and story than what ultimately makes it to the page. In short, it’s good to have plenty of detail to choose from—some of those details might not make the final cut. 

Contextual Situation 

Understanding the contextual situation surrounding the scene gives the writer an opportunity to temporally ground the story. Moreover, adding context can give insight into the character’s motivations and/or the world around them. Adding additional context into a scene will help make the world in which the characters exist feel fuller.

For example, if my scene is set in the 1980’s and the character enters a room in which President Reagan is giving a speech on a television, the reader knows the story is taking place in a certain period without having given the date explicitly—this grounding in time can be made clearer by the inclusion of visual elements such as clothing, vehicles, technology, tec. To take the idea of context and this example one step further, the speech being given by the president might bring more context to the scene. For example, if the writer shows that it is the “tear down the wall” speech, that might add a certain political context to the reader’s mind. If, however, the writer show’s that it is the speech in which Reagan opined on the existence of aliens, the reader might assume that aliens might be important to the character or story. 

The above examples use societal contexts to establish the era in which the story takes place. It is also important to consider the contexts more closely surrounding the character. Who are they? What do they do? What is affecting them? What are their goals? In short: what are the circumstances surrounding the character’s situation?

Sensory Elements 

 Sensory elements are a good way to add texture to a scene. Sensory elements can also be used to bring the reader closer to the character. Consider what the character might smell, taste, touch. Use descriptive language while conveying these senses to the reader. One could write that when a character enters a scene, they “smell something bad;” or they could use more descriptive language and write something that adds smore to the reader’s experience. For example, maybe the character smelled something pungent, like the stench of a decomposing body of a recently deceased groundhog wafting from the crawlspace on a hot summer day. You might not have liked that last sentence, but it was certainly more descriptive than, they “smelled something bad.”

Consider each sensory element that might exist in the scene. Try to describe each sensory element using as many adjectives as you can think of. You likely will not use all the ideas that you generate. Though it is important to add texture to a scene, and to use your character’s senses to bring them closer to your reader, beware not to overwhelm your reader. Include enough detail to bring the world to life, but not so much that the reader loses the plot. 

Metacognitive Perspective

Taking a metacognitive view is where the real power of reflective writing manifests. This is where we, as writers, step back and look at our own experiences from a bird’s eye point of view. Through the metacognitive view, we take the opportunity to consider our experiences: how did we feel in a situation, what did we do well, what did we not do well, and what we might do differently next time. 

It is key in reflective writing to take the metacognitive perspective, as answering these questions objectively can lead to growth. However, we can also use this way of thinking in writing a scene of fiction. Ask these questions about a character to get to really know them: what are this character’s strengths, what are their weaknesses, how are they going to contend with their shortcomings? You can certainly add to this list. The more the writer knows their character, the more they’ll be able to bring the character to life for the reader. 

Check out the related videos below. But first, sign up to our newsletter to get monthly 1134 Press updates!

How to Use Paper Scraps for Junk Journal Cards

We have a new studio vlog up on the 1134 Press YouTube channel this week. The studio vlogs are my favorite—this one has such a chill vibe. This time, we learn to use paper scraps to make junk journal cards. We also get a little insight into Bryonna’s own thoughts. Bryonna also talks some about reflective writing, which is something that I find myself promoting quite often.

Anyhow, let’s not talk about it, let’s be about it—check out the video below!

Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button for more awesome videos!

Double Exposing Polaroid Film

Happy easter everybody! If you’re reading this right now, there’s a good chance you might be bored around the house—which is the inspiration for this video!

If you happen to have a polaroid camera on hand, and are looking for something different to do with your journals, try out this double exposure technique. In the video, Bryonna shows exactly how to manipulate the camera to create some very interesting images.

Why not makes some ghostly pictures for your junk journal?

Check it out below!

If you think this is a fun video, subscribe for more!

Find Junk Journal Supplies at Home

One fun aspect of junk journaling is the repurposing of things that might have otherwise been thrown out. Oftentimes we’ll repurpose pages from old books, old cards, and other paper scraps one might find around the home office or crafting space. In this week’s video, however, Bryonna sources materials from an often overlooked place—the car! 

 I’m sure many of you keep the interior of your cars spotless. I’m also sure that many others could use a clean right about now. Let’s just say that Bryonna found a lot of material to junk journal with while cleaning out the car. 

Get inspired for an outside-the-box take on sourcing materials (and putting them together) at the video below! 

Journaling Prompt for Self-Care

In today's Junk Journal with Me video, we celebrate the journal artist Sunny, aka @miavibes, and her life and work by writing self-care notes and stitching them together with paper scraps. Junk journaling doesn’t only have to be about making a pretty collage. It can also have substance with your self-care notes. This journaling prompt is perfect for junk journal newbies, who are looking for ideas on what to write about in their junk journals!

Bryonna is working on a glue book binder that she made a few months ago. The glue book binder is ideal for using up paper scraps that you’ve been hoarding. Now, get out those paper scraps and get ready to make something new and beneficial to your self-care!

Follow along with Bryonna in the video linked below:

Please like, subscribe, and share!

Junk Journal with Me: Episode 12

In this week’s Junk Journal with Me video, Bryonna uses ephemera from previous videos to give some more Junk Journalling inspiration. This week’s video is sans commentary. The music, though, is very jazzy; super chill to sit back and watch an awesome spread being made.

Check the video out below!

Earlier this week, we produced a video all about creative ways to use stamps. The fun stuff in this video isn’t limited to using stamps, though. Also watch a specimen card be made and how to create a “window” in your paper craft project. Watching the tutorial is much more enjoyable than reading about it. So, check this one out now!

We hope you enjoy these videos! Subscribe to the channel and catch new ones every Wednesday and Sunday—Thanks!

How to Use a Die Cutting Machine

In this week’s Junk Journal with Me video, Bryonna offers a usefully inspiring tutorial. If you are just starting out using your new die cutting machine, this video is for you. Bryonna uses a Tim Holtz and Sizzix Vagabond 2 die cut and embossing machine for this video. You do not need the exact model, though, to apply what you learn in this tutorial to your own junk journal spreads.

Check out the video below!

And don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share—it’s more helpful than you know!

Poetry Walk

It’s snowing today in Baltimore. Snow days are always good writing days, in my opinion. I have a few writing projects in the works, and I plan to spend some time with at least one of them today. One doesn’t necessarily need a project in order to spend some time writing, though. I would argue, actually, that writing just for the heck of it is far more satisfying than writing to a specific goal. 

It might not be a snow day in your neck of the woods. Still, I would like to challenge you to spend some time today writing. It doesn’t matter what you write about. Just write; write whatever you feel. In the interest of inspiring you to write today, I am going to offer up some things to prompt you. First, I will give you one of my favorite writing prompts. Then, I am adding a link to one of our recent videos; it’s about ideas of what to write in your journal!

Writing Prompt:

This is one of my favorite writing prompts because it gets you outside and moving around. Moreover, it asks you to pay attention to the world around you. We call this one a Poetry Walk. 

Poetry Walk

1)    If it’s snowing in your neighborhood, bundle up. Grab yourself a pen, or pencil, and a notepad. Head outside. 

2)    Try to walk without a set destination. Think of it more as a wander. Try not to end up too far from home; you don’t want to find yourself calling a Lyft to get back. 

3)    Mind all of your senses. What do you see, smell, hear? Take note. 

4)    Walk with opened eyes. What might you have just walked by normally, but upon closer consideration inspires your imagination? Take note of the things that speak to your imagination. Consider these things without limitation. 

5)    Feel free to take something back with you, if it inspires you. An interestingly shaped tree branch might be a wizard’s staff in your imagination, for example. 

6)    Upon returning home with notes in hand, a possible souvenir as well, don’t hesitate—start writing! Freely write without thinking too much about it. Let your findings inspire you. The fun part about this writing is that you can never know where it will go. Maybe you begin with a story about the totally cool wizard’s staff you found, but you end up ruminating on the expansiveness of the universe—who knows! 

Now, for the link I promised: 

Find more writing inspiration below!

Making a Glue Book

In our most recent video, Bryonna makes a glue book. According to her, the difference between a junk journal and a glue book is that a glue book is a more relaxed way to use your “stash.” So, have fun with this tutorial! 

Follow along with Bryonna as she creates four collages in a three ringed binder. She uses a variety of materials in this project. The materials used include various papers, cut-outs from magazines, pictures from an old book, pressed flowers, and much more. Watch the video to see everything she used and to get some creative inspiration.

Also, there is a prompt included in the tutorial to practice your design skills using a design grid layout. It’s common to get into the habit of using the same spread over and over, albeit with different materials. Let the prompt inspire you to try some new things this week. 

Check out the video below, and give us a like and subscribe—it helps more than you know! 

Cottage Core Journal

Cottage core is whimsical by nature, which makes for a good escape. If you’re new to cottage core, watch the video for an introduction to the aesthetic. Also, in this week’s video, learn how to use clear resin epoxy, design with dried flowers, and how to use the Coptic binding method. 

Bookmaking is a great cottage core activity. Creating a cottage core inspired resin cover with dried flowers is the perfect project for beginning bookmakers! Watch the video below for more, and note: the tools used in the video will be linked in the description. 

Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Junk Journal with Me

Two new Junk Journal with Me videos have gone live over the past week. Bryonna also reviewed the We R Memory Keepers Book Binding Guide. Find a brief description of each along with the links below.

In Junk Journal with Me Episode 6, Bryonna writes a letter of her intentions for 2021. The writing is printed onto transparency paper and folded (following the Paper Kawaii Origami Envelope Tutorial). See the video linked below for more creative inspiration!

In Junk Journal with Me Episode 7, Bryonna practices writing with a Trustela calligraphy pen set. She also shares some journaling prompts to help inspire your own journaling. And as usual, Bryonna shares links to the tools noted in the video.

In Reviewing the We R Memory Keepers Book Binding Guide, Bryonna makes a Japanese stab bound sketchbook. She also shows how to make a watercolor sketchbook with leather cover. Watch the video below for the review.

Bryonna's Junk Journal Process

In our most recent video, Bryonna shares her junk journal process. Bryonna made vintage ephemera that she sews together with her new sewing machine. She’s never used a sewing machine before, so this was a bit of a learning exercise. 

Also, in this video, Bryonna uses paper scraps to collage with rather than throwing them away. While showing the collage in progress, Bryonna also discusses art journaling.  Watch the video below to see the junk journal page constructed. We hope this video inspires your next junk journal page! 

1134press@gmail.com