Prompt #27 - Turning Junk into Gratitude

Focus on what you have instead of what you want

We all want to be happy, that's pretty universal. What is different for each person is how they imagine that happiness to look. Often we think, that it's the Things that will make us happy.

I'll be happy if I just get that car / my own house / a nice watch / that 120-piece Faber-Castell Polychromos set (cough cough). Of course, those things will bring us joy, but only for a short time.

I mean, just look at it!

Us humans are masters at acclimatising to a new situation. Once we've had that fancy new Thing for a while, we get used it and go back to our baseline happiness, trying to find the next Thing to make us happy.

Don't get me wrong, of course, we need to make sure all our needs are met first, but once we live more or less comfortably, more stuff does not more happiness. What does make us happy is practicing gratitude. Gratitude for the people in our lives, for the good things (big or small) that happen to us. Writing them down every day has a measurable impact on our well-being.

So today, instead of buying something new, we're making a gratitude journal out of trash.

The Activity: Make a Gratitude Junk Journal

Step 1: Collect the junk

Go and find the paper trash you have lying around the house. The paper should be good enough to draw or write on but doesn't need to be white, or flat. I collected some food delivery bags, and a pile of the envelopes that bills come in (turning bills into art is another silver lining of this exercise).

Also, find a piece of cardboard you can use for the front and back covers. I used an empty orange juice carton.

Step 2: Cut the pages

I used a small A6 notebook as a template to cut my trash into pages. A6 is a good format - it's big enough to draw in and small enough to get many pages out of your trash.

If you don't have any suitable template, you can cut out the cardboard first, then put it on top of the paper to cut around it.

Step 3: Punch holes in your pages

Normally, I would tell you exactly what to do here, but much to my surprise I found out when I moved to Sweden, that hole punches are not universally normed. So your hole punch might look very different than mine.

I swear, I had never seen such a thing before.

The Swedish one I have made two holes toward the top of the page, and two holes toward the bottom. Depending on what you have, you can also do three or four evenly spaced holes along the side. Basically, we want 3-5 holes on the side of every page that we can use to sew our journal together.

Step 4: Sew your journal together

Find some yarn, thick thread, or similar, and thread it through the holes to sew your journal together. Here is a super simple way (for first graders) that you can use to start. I used embroidery thread and did a combination of this stitch and a cross stitch across the spine.

You want to make sure that you don't bind it too tightly, otherwise, it'll constantly pop open on one side, and it'll be hard to turn the pages around.

Since my paper was very wrinkled, the pages stood apart quite a lot. So I also attached some thread to the other side, so I could tie it shut.

Here's the finished product:

Step 5: Gratitude

Now your brand new journal is ready, fill the first page with something you are grateful for today. Friends, family, a nice meal, beautiful weather, a good book? Anything that brought you joy today. You can write, draw, or collage. It only needs to make sense to you.

If you can, take a moment each evening and journal in your own style about three things that went well that day.

My Example

You've already seen my junk journal in the pictures above. I'm very happy with how it turned out, the mix of white and craft paper, and the colourful orange cover.

For my gratitude page, I chose to make a collage using a sticker book I received from my friends yesterday as an early Christmas present.

I'm grateful to be living in this beautiful place, so close to the ocean, and to have found such wonderful friends. This page will remind me every time I look at it.

Check out the full process here:

@thestresslesspencilI got this amazing sticker book from friends yesterday, and this morning I made the Junk Journal from used paper bags, envelopes, and an orange juice carton. ♻️ they work so well together 💙 #junkjournal #stickers #artjournal #journalwithme #arttok #foryou

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And you, what are you grateful for today?

Have a creative week my friends.

Love,

Lorena

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