Little Golden Book Part I; The Cover

I posted a while ago that I found this Little Golden Book at an antique store recently. Now I've been searching for this book for many years since it has sentimental value to me. When I was in kindergarten, I broke my arm in three places which included my elbow. I was hospitalized for three weeks afterwards.

During that time, my grandmother visited me and brought me this book and a stuffed elephant. (This is when my love for elephants began too!)

I decided to make a junk journal with it. Now, there are so many opinions on what/how a junk journal is, but to me it's basically an art journal made with junk. When I say junk, I mean stuff that would have been thrown away if I didn't decide to rescue it.

You can check out some of my junk journal pages by clicking on the Junk Journal label to the right and also on the Junk Journal Playlist on my YouTube channel. 

I'm going to separate this project into parts since I have to create the journal before I can add some fun artwork inside.

PART I; The Cover:

The first thing I'm going to do is remove the inside pages as carefully as possible so I can still use some of the pages for future projects. This was easier said then done but I did it without too much damage.

Be sure to check out the YouTube video here:

I've done a little research and noticed that there are so many ways to create a spine for a new journal. I decided to use a piece of a Tyvex pocket (gotta use junk in a junk journal, right?) from what, I don’t know. I'm using strong double sided tape to adhere the strip to each side of the book cover.

It was hard to decide how wide I wanted the spine since these pages can sure thicken up, but I'm including four signatures inside and figured 2.5” was plenty of room. After measuring the book height, I cut the Tyvex piece to 8x4.5” (1” on each side plus the 2.5” for the signatures) to adhere to the inside covers.

Next post will be creating the signatures and placing them into the journal. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss these posts. I try to limit my videos to around 10 minutes so there will be lots of sped up portions but if you have any questions please ask.