Stationery Journal by Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Inkling

Once upon a time, hotels offered their guests beautiful writing paper and envelopes in the desk drawer of each room. I always mailed a letter or two from my travels and I always took home a few sheets and envelopes as a souvenir.

Do you have a similar stash? If so, how about joining me in putting them to good use: Make a Stationery Journal that includes writing paper in varying sizes and a few envelopes to use for pockets. (Scroll down to the ‘OPTIONS’ if you don’t already have a collection of paper ephemera.)

Stationery Journals make great gifts for friends who love to travel. Make a couple for yourself – one to take with you when you’re away from home and another to keep next to your favorite chair where it can hold lists, tickets and such. (Scroll down to the ‘OPTIONS’ for even more ideas.)

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Paint chipboard covers on both sides with black gesso. Allow to dry.

2. Using matte medium as an adhesive and as a sealer, arrange and adhere torn pieces of stationery on one or both covers and one or both sides of each one. I chose to orient these pieces so they are vertical or horizontal, but not on the diagonal. And I did not overlap them because I wanted to be able to read the names and addresses, but the choice is yours. I used torn paper for the inside of the covers rather than hotel stationery.

3. Again using matte medium, arrange and adhere canceled stamps. I chose to orient the stamps on the diagonal, adding some movement to an otherwise static and formal composition.

 

4. Dry brush with white paint. Use vertical, horizontal, and diagonal strokes and very little paint.

5. Stack the writing paper so the largest sheets are at the back and the smaller ones stacked on top. Stack the envelopes, offset, on top of the papers, carefully aligning at the left side. If you have a coil binding punch or other binding system, prepare the pages before stacking them between the covers and punch the covers as well. If not, let your local office supply store do the binding for you.

OPTIONS:

Create a planner by binding in a mini-calendar pad and printing calendar pages on the writing paper.

Add dividers, graph paper, drawing paper, or other kinds of pages.

If you don’t have a collection of stationery from different hotels, create that same general look with rubber stamps, stencils, or collage. Writing paper usually has a logo or something small at the top and an address at the bottom, so your design could be a bird at the top and a branch at the bottom, a canceled stamp at the top and a line of poetry at the bottom, or whatever else comes to mind! (You’re going for the ‘feel’ of hotel stationery, not trying to duplicate it.)

Ask friends who travel to bring home paper and envelopes from their trips.

SUPPLIES:

• Black gesso
• White acrylic paint
• Matte medium
• Paintbrush (1-2”)
• Chipboard (2 pieces, 8.5” x 11”)
• Coil binding punch
• Black coil (or color of choice)
• Writing paper and envelopes
• Canceled stamps