Beautiful Burgundy Botanical Fabric Vintage Junk Journal

This vintage junk journal beauty was inspired by the burgundy fabric I picked up at a thrift store. It ended up being quite large, due to all the embellishments and ephemera I included. But hey, I am of the mindset the more the better!

I started with 6 8×10″ pages of thick neutral colored card stock, then took the burgundy floral fabric and cut 2 pieces that also measured 8×10″ (for the front and back covers). Next, I pulled out various lace, fabric and craft paper pieces and cut them to approximately the same dimensions, until I had 10 total (using mostly cream and off white lace/fabric for this part). Taking one piece of burgundy fabric and one piece of craft paper, I glued fabric to the front and craft paper to the back of one piece of card stock (Elmer’s craft bond glue pen worked great). I did the same for the back cover. Next, I assembled each of the interior pages using the same process to end up with a total of 6 double sided pages for my journal. After sewing a zig-zag border around each of the 6 pages with my sewing machine, I punched 2 holes in each page with an awl and hammer, then attached grommets using my Crop A Dile. The holes were 1″ in on the side and 2″ in from the top and bottom of the page. 2 inch binder rings were used for this journal. NOTE: before adding your grommets, make sure the binder ring slides in easily. I have made that mistake before!

Now onto the layering: After gathering various pieces of vintage fabric and lace from my stash (smaller than 8×10″) I attached them with fabri-tac creating tuck spots and pockets as I went. I don’t ever have a specific plan in mind: just keep adding until you are satisfied with the result. My crafting friend tells me I am “OVER THE TOP” with my embellishing, that is just my style. The finishing touches were buttons, flowers, journal tags, photos, jewels, vintage photographs and ribbon that were attached using E6000.

Assembly of the pages into the journal was the easiest part, I just had to decide what order the pages should be in. I felt the front cover needed some embellishing. For this I added additional fabric, lace trim around 3 of the edges, buttons, handmade burlap fabric flowers along with a vintage brooch. On the top binder ring, I tied on additional lace, trim, and ribbon that were used in the junk journal to bring it all together.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I plan on more in depth tutorials in the future, with step by step photos to go along with the instructions.

Glitter on friends,