I'm currently a 46 y/o AuDHD lady; married, with 1 adult "kid" still at home. We have 2 little dogs (Chi-mixes).
For the last 15 years, my hobby/hyperfocus/dopamine trigger has been paper crafting (especially collage art) via art journals, mail art, zines, artist trading cards, assemblages and other miscellaneous junk. I like maximalist styles; lots of colors, bold graphics, patterns, eye candy overload. It's a hobby and I like to have fun with it.
I'm here to share my makes and try and make this a blog for my own personal creations. If you have any papery/crafting/journaling/glue questions, pls ask! I'm a nerd and like to help!
ɪɢ: ᴄᴜᴛᴘᴀsᴛᴇsᴛᴇᴘʜ
ᴋᴏ-ғɪ.ᴄᴏᴍ/ᴄᴜᴛᴘᴀsᴛᴇsᴛᴇᴘʜ (not updating at the mo, but there are some freebie printables there if that's your thing)
Since my last post here, I finished another (fairly big) project: a scrapbook for my dogs. I've been thinking about making it since last year. Finally got the pictures printed (through Google photos), collected new supplies and got the book. Then I had to procrastinate for a month or so....and then once I got working on it it came together pretty easily.
I used a 5x7 photo album as my book. I was partly inspired by someone on IG who used a 4x6 photo album to make a mini collage style scrapbook. That size ended up being too small for my liking, so I went up to the next photo size.
I didn't get too many new supplies. Besides the album, I got new pattern papers and alpha stickers. I printed a lot of freebies from digitalscrapbook.com and cut a lot of die-cuts with my Cricut. I also made stickers out of their toys - just took photos of them and cut out the backgrounds in Procreate.
A lot of the pages are simply the photos mounted on cute paper, but I also made themed collage spreads. I had to print a couple of pages of smaller scale images to fit. Before starting, I made an outline of all the pages I wanted to make, based on the photos I had printed and their personalities. It really helped me fill the book out.
I have hundreds of photos of my dogs, so I focused on the time we've had them together. Trixie came first and we added Roxy the following year. This is a nice little intro to them.
I shared a flip through on my IG that shows more pages. [clicky]
More artist trading cards?! I swear, I'm not getting back on this train...but this is what happens when I have another, more meaningful project to work on and I'm too chicken shit to get started on it.
.•♫•♬• 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖗𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 •♬•♫•.
These are a lot of paper scraps, acrylic paint smooshes and smears, paint pens, solid paint markers, pencils and correction tape. Ta-da!
My mini composition collage book is done! This is my second one. By pure coincidence I finished it around the same time I finished the first one last year. April has been good for finishing journals. And this is my first finished journal of 2026! Now what? 😅💀
These are the last few spreads I finished. I've got a flip of the whole book up on my Insta: HERE.
I finished my mini collage journal (yay!) and had quite a bit of paper leftover. So I made two 12"x12" masterboards and cut them down into 21 ATCs. Minus a 4"x6" section I wanted to keep for myself. There are also some offcuts left that I may turn into some sort of mosaic cards...or idk? We'll see.
It's been awhile since I've made boards/ATCs like this and I had fun. Still have some scraps leftover though! 🤓
Progress in my mini composition notebook collage journal.
I'm leaning more into textures with this book. Letting what's usually just the background be more of a star and trying not to force "focal" images...though some still show up. It's a bit new for me, but I'm really digging the results.
All of the pages in this book started out as just 2-3 scraps plastered on the pages randomly during a couple of journal meetup sessions. Now I'm going back and finishing the pages. I really like that as a method to combat blank page paralysis
I'm still finding it hard to get going creatively, but little bits of light are peeking out more often. It actually feels good to see all these images together, even though all these different things were created over the course of a couple of months. My brain likes to tell me I'm not doing enough, but this is a pretty nice group of things. Shut up, brain.
When I feel really restless, I'll just sit at my worktable and smear paints on a large sheet of watercolor paper. I'll also scribble and stamp with foam shapes. It's carefree creativity with no expectations of perfection. I've made 2 such masterboards now and have a little stack of abstract postcards and ATCs.
I made some collage stationery for one of my creative pen pals. We always send some creative bit with our notes, and this time I just decided to make the note the creative bit.
I did a spread on my craftcave in my dailies journal. I've been daydreaming a lot about rearranging the space somehow and completely overhauling my stash of supplies. I don't want to do all that work though, lol. So I'll continue appreciating it for what it is. I had to include some of my clown collection....and my original clear phone from when I was 12.
I started a new mini composition notebook journal. I really liked the one I made last year. It was just a random collage journal, but this one, I've decided, is going to be driven by Pinterest quotes. I need more of a focus than just "random" if I'm going to get anything done this year apparently.
Back to some bookwork in my "dailies" - catching up with Xmas and New Year spreads.
We spent Xmas with my folks back in my hometown. Husband likes a yearly dip in the Gulf of Mexico to celebrate the day and it wasn't TOO cold. I'm not a big holiday person, but wanted to record it in my little book with some photos. I need to make use of personal pics more often.
My new year has been off to a slow start, creatively, but I did start up a journaling meetup group. Since I'm no longer obsessing over IG to keep up with creative peeps, I figured local IRL creative connection was worth a shot. Super effective, would recommend.
I've been prepping a lot of stuff, behind the scenes, so far this year. It's weird. It's not artblock...but it's like, I feel more strongly the need to set the stage, so to speak. I've been making books, reorganizing, purging old supplies, obtaining new ones. A bunch of nesting work.
Maybe I'm just procrastinating....but productively. 🤷♀️🤔
I made a couple of new booklets for bookwork in 2026. Also prepped another mini composition notebook.
The white one is a BIIIIIIG sheet of Koh-i-Noor drawing paper, folded zine style....but then trimmed and saddle stitched and partially glued. The books I make are about 20% actual skill, 80% brute force MAKE IT WORK IT'S JUST PAPER.
The other one is a Trader Joe's bag. I dismantled the bag until it was one long sheet with the handles at either end, then accordion folded it, trimmed, glued the backs together and covered the spine with gaffer's tape. I collaged on images from the off-cuts and also glued in some extra fold outs and pages.
Here are the art books, journals and book adjacent things I started and/or finished in 2025.
The Girly Book (2021-2025). The oldest book I worked on this year...and I'm so glad I stuck with it and finished it. This journal is my ode to "girl life"...the pretty, bloody, snarky, powerful, complicated parts of it all.
Daily Junk I (January-April 2025). My first attempt at a journal made with more daily, collected "real life" junk. I'm not a documenter when it comes to journaling, really. I'm not writing all the details of my day-to-day (I think LiveJournal ruined me in that department years ago 🥲) and I don't care to collect receipts and food packaging and all that. But I tried! And I liked how it turned out in the end...kind of an analog Pinterest board meets junk journal. I'm still working on my second Daily Junk now.
Mini Collage Composition Notebook (February-April 2025). The first time I worked this small in a journal....inspired by someone I follow on Insta. Also, I used to love to make ATCs and made them constantly up until last year. This little book kind of scratched that itch for mini art.
Paper Doll Folio (May 2025). This was just a fun little one-off...to use up a paper doll printable kit I got on Etsy. It was made out of 2 large USPS envelopes from stamp orders.
Skinny Dolls (June 2025). Another one-off quick book of dolls, but I made these dolls myself, drawing in Procreate. Their legs are from different legging catalogs.
Cut+Paste+July. I brought back this old prompt challenge this year and had a lot of fun doing prompts in a no-pressure kind of way.
Paper+Paint (July 2025). This was a bunch of kraft cardstock I collaged on and then spray painted with different stencils. I was planning on adding more to the pages, but ended up liking it as-is.
Scraps (October-November 2025). In an effort to cull all the little bins of papers I have piled up from other finished projects this year, I set out to just glue them to the pages. No thoughts, just glue! Only I can't do "no thoughts"...I was subconsciously forming color palettes and adding images. I had planned on going back and adding paint to the pages, but again, plans changed.
So that's my year in books! I continued practicing "journaling without obligation"...not letting the journals guide me or forcing ideas. Letting things simmer. Stopping when I wanted to, not by page numbers. Working in multiple books at the same time.
I still have a couple of journals I'm taking into 2026 with me...and am already thinking about new ones to make.
I have been working on mostly non-paper stuff for the last couple of weeks. What started as a little journey of making fabric tassels has now turned into fabric bead things.
I came across this style of handmade bead looking at tassel inspo. They're in the same wheelhouse. I got super excited when I realized I could repurpose doggie bag rolls as the base of the bead.
I've been saving these little cardboard tubes because I knew I'd figure out something for them and finally did. Sweet validation. I've been wrapping them in papers I painted up in Procreate before adding the fabric and trims.
I'm having a grand ol' time making them. I think that's because it's a completely new thing to me and I barely know what I'm doing, so perfectionism is completely fucked. I have no notions of right and wrong ways....I'm just going at it like a dumb newbie.
A book I made from a promotional mailer. The goal was to include found poetry and create a more subdued aesthetic than what I usually bring to the table. I also ended up including some of my original photography + messages sent to me.
