#journal junk

[cutpastesteph]

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.

[cutpastesteph]

Back in the mid pandemic times, there was this trend of getting cheap rag rugs and dismantling them to reclaim the (recycled) fabric they were made out of.

All you had to do was cut through the thread holding the fabric pieces together and you had a load of colorful fabric.

I got a $5 rug and took it apart...partly because I like dumb repetitive tasks and partly because I had high hopes of using the scraps in all kinds of funky boho projects. But first I just stuffed the scraps in a bin and shoved it under a bed.

Long story longer, 5 years later I finally have my mind made up to make funky tassels for journals or whatever, so I dug the scraps out and started processing them...sorting by color and hand washing them.

That was my project the last 2 days. 😅 Luckily it's been cool and sunny this past week. Now my craft cave closet looks like this:

And guess what? The next goal is to take all those scraps and rip them down into smaller strips... which will probably take a month, but at least I'll be busy.