'The Visit' Fall Journal with Junk Journal kits for sale!

 Hello lovely readers, I am back to share my new fall journal called 'The Visit', and also

to share some exciting news! I have opened an Etsy shop called 'Cloth & Paper Shop'.

'The Visit'

I had purchased this little antique pillow shown above at an estate sale and it sat near my desk, the vibrant rich reds calling out to me and it inspired me to create this journal as an ode to autumn, my favourite season of the year. I carefully took this little gem apart and used the various elements on my cover and in my signatures. I combined these fabrics with some photos that I took from a trip back to see my family in Georgia. There's nothing like fall in the South, I always want to get cozy with a fresh gathering of textiles and stitch some memories into a journal. 

 

Well dear readers I have also created four junk journal kits made from the materials I used to make this journal, called 'Autumn Rose', and I have finally(!) begun to post a few items in my Etsy shop called 'Cloth & Paper Shop'. This kit includes all the fabrics I used to make this fall journal, my favourite cloth was a vintage printed floral velvety upholstery material in soft warm orangy colours I used on my cover, so pretty. Here is the link to my shop where you can find this kit and other textile bundles as well.

Cloth & Paper Shop 

 

I have an evergrowing collection of vintage and antique textiles, lace, hand crocheted trims and buttons that I have decided to make into some vintage textile kits. Some will include vintage handpicked ephemera matching the colours or theme based on colours, seasons, or holidays. These kits can be be used for so many crafts....I mostly make junk journals, but these kits would be wonderful for slow stitching, textile arts, sewing projects of all sorts - needle books (this is my next project I want to make), soft cloth bags, purses, book covers, pillows, textile collage, the possibilities are endless........ I love to buy these kits myself as they are often colour coordinated and also include trims, buttons and goodies that all together make for a pretty journal, and I know collecting all the various vintage supplies to make a junk journal can be a bit daunting. I have become quite good at spotting old forgotten but beautiful pieces of cloth at all the estate sales I go to and I love it when I find pieces that are calling out to be rescued, transformed, reused and enjoyed all over again. There is something so magical about reclaiming lovely things from the past, the stories these treasures could tell! Knowing they were well loved from someone long ago makes them even more special, and I can loose myself in all their worn and decayed beauty. I gentle launder and sort the fabrics and then create kits with enough pieces of cloth, matching ephemera, trims, doilies, sewing notions, buttons, and charms so you can start on a journal or sewing project right away. Recently I have posted some packs made up of old quilt pieces, would make for a lovely slow stitching project. I also have some nice ephemera packs that I have created from all the antique books I have collected.

Thank you so much for visiting, Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my American friends and family, and my simple wish is to inspire you to create something treasured of your own! 

 

Warm hugs, 

Lisa xoxoxox

Two Marys

 Two Marys

 

Hello dear readers, I am wondering how many of you have read Frankenstein, one of the first Gothic works of fiction, written by a very young brilliant author named Mary Shelley and published anonymously (quite fitting for her times, as I am reminded of a Virginia Woolfe quote "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."). A tale so profound in its questions of the soul, and the human condition that it endures to the present day, more than two hundred years after it was first written in 1818.

 

 I've always enjoyed reading classic English literature and several months ago I bought myself a book called 'Romantic Outlaws' the story of Mary Godwin, who later became Mary Godwin Shelley after she fell hopelessly in love with Percy Byshe Shelley, and her powerful but absent mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, herself considered an important author of her time and an original proto-feminist. It was an incredible read and I couldn't put the book down. The book wove the two women's life stories together as young Mary Godwin revered her mother who passed away after giving birth to her, and her life story was remarkably similar to her mothers. Both were acclaimed authors, both broke nearly every convention of the strict Georgian and Victorian societies in which they lived, and both left a legacy of the some of finest English literature ever written. I enjoyed this journey into the heart of these two women so much that I reread Frankenstein, Shelley's masterpiece of Gothic fiction, then gathered a basket of beautiful vintage silk brocade, salvaged remnants of an antique beaded dress and some dark wine velvet and pieced together a Gothic inspired book exploring the lives and works of both Marys.

 

Portrait of Mary Godwin Shelley shown at the Royal Academy in 1840, accompanied by lines from a Percy Shelley poem calling her a "child of love and light".

 

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

                                    "The Vindication of the Rights of Women" - Mary Wollstonecraft

 

 

 

 

The following two journal pages were what I created after reading about Percy Shelley's first wife who he abandoned when he met Mary Godwin. As I read on I saw that her name was Harriet Westbrook, at this I felt a little pang of surprise and joy...Westbrook is my maiden name, and I am descended from a long line of John Westbrooks from Bromley, a suburb of London. Not that my name is particularly special, but of course I went back to my family tree I created a few years ago, and at first glance I could not find a connection from my line of Westbrooks to John Westbrook, Harriet's father who owned a popular coffee house and tavern in Mayfair, London, but that doesn't mean I won't stop looking! This prompted me to look for a book on Harriet Westbrook Shelley, and I found one, called 'Five Long Years' which I purchased and read as well. Although the intrigue of her family was enjoyable to read about, discovering her tragic life story was not. Harriet bore Percy Shelley two children and was callously tossed aside when he met young Mary Godwin, herself also 16 years old, the same age as Harriet was when Percy Shelley convinced her to elope, much to the chagrin of his father. I read that Harriet returned to live with her own family but felt so lost and miserable that she disappeared for a few weeks, apparently living under an alias in rented rooms in a London tavern before they found her drowned in The Serpentine River in Hyde Park. Harriet left a long and painful suicide note in her room and here I have written this note on some rust dyed muslin. Tragedy and death haunted this trio of young lovers as Percy and Mary lost a young daughter and a son to illness, Percy Shelley died young and unexpectedly in a boating accident off the shores of Italy, and Mary Shelley never remarried, but lived on in the shadows of her famous lost husband.

 

 

“On Tuesday a respectable female, far advanced in pregnancy, was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal catastrophe, her husband being abroad”

— Harriet’s death notice appeared in the London Times December 12, 1816 edition. 

 

 

    
 

 

 

 

I seem moved to create journals inspired by what I love to read and explore, but your inspiration can come from whatever calls to you...it could be the changing seasons, some beautiful vintage fabric, or a favourite colour palette. I create a small mood board with some papers and swatches of fabric that I'm going to use at the beginning of each project...it helps to keep me on track through the many hours it takes to create a journal.

 

Let me know what inspires you too!

Thanks for visiting,

 

Love, Lisa xoxox

 

mended hearts

'mended hearts'

So I found a beautifully worn and soft quilt a while back and I took it home, washed it very gently and then slowly started to cut it up and pick it all apart. The faded colours and the vintage prints began to remind me of both of my grandmothers....they would have worn day dresses made of this type of beautiful printed soft cotton, so I put some signatures of paper and cloth together and added some photos of Irene May and Ada Dorothy.

 

Whenever I find old faded baby clothes on my weekend my scavenger hunts, my heart skips a beat. I found this worn soft blue embroidered baby dress with the tiniest mother of pearl buttons you ever did see, and I love to use these little faded dresses in my journals. They are ever so daintily embroidered and seem handmade.

 

My beautiful grandmother Dorothy with my father, her first son and second child. What few photographs of my father as a child I have are so precious to me. My grandmother was born in Holborn, London, and her father William enlisted on New Year's Eve 1914 in the East Surrey Regiment and was away at war when she was born the following year. Her husband, my grandfather George Herbert, was a RAF pilot and served in the second world war, and was also gone for many years. Her life can't have been very easy, but thinking of her and what she endured with kindness of heart, faith, and grace has moved me, and strangely somehow through the threads that bind us together, remembering her has given me much comfort and strength, especially in trying times.

I loved working with this vintage quilt so much that I am almost finished making two more journals with the same materials that I will offer for sale. The textures of this vintage quilt have been such a joy to work with, I love the idea of restoring something handmade, tattered, and forgotten. Both journals measure 6 X 7. Once they are finished, I will come back to show photos if anyone is interested in owning one of these journals. They have such a rural 1940s vibe, especially adding many handwritten recipes on old bits of faded brown paper. These books really did make themselves in that starting with this quilt just threw me back into my childhood and being in my grandmas kitchen watching her turning out pies of every sort like nobody's business. She was a kind gentle loving grandma, wife and mother and I suppose this journal is an ode to my love for her.

See you soon,

Lisa xoxoxox