Treasure and JOY

I have been thinking about my JOY book for this year. JOY stands for 'journal our Yule' which is P and mines Pagan version of JYC! Basically the same except we incorporate our Yule traditions in with our christmas traditions.

P had said what a lovely idea it would be to do my journal inside an old christmas book. We then found a pin on pinterest of a JYC book done inside a christmas stories book, so the hunt was on for an old looking copy of this Charles Dickens favourite!

I took P to this wonderful bookshop in Ryde. He sells new books but has 3 stories of secondhand books.We were in there for over an hour and came out with some excellent stuff!

 My selection

I found a red leather copy of A Christmas Carol, not that old, rather made to look old, another copy of A christmas carol as it has some wonderful line drawings in it, an old music book, some old patterns, a book of Keats poetry and oh wonderous joy, an old ledger from 1871!!

 (sorry forgot to turn photos!)

I have been looking for one of these old ledgers for about 8 months. They seem all the trend at the moment to art journal in. I tried ebay and etsy but they were either too expensive or would not post to the UK. I went into the same bookshop about 6 months ago and asked if he had any and he said no. I found this in the bookshop just sat on the window sill on the second level of the shop, as if it was just waiting for me!

It is quite badly damaged but I am sure I can do something with it. And it was only £6!

It is about a third full with the most wonderful old writing. The trouble is, now I have started reading it I am not sure if I can art journal over the pages! It is so interesting.It has the Butlers accounts in, how much of what was bought, when and the price. The ledger seems to be from an English Family and starts off in Wellington(in India), then Aldershot then back to Burma. The names of where they are at the time are at the top of each page and by googling I have found they are towns in India. The names listed as the servents, I wasn't sure if they were the peoples names or their job but I googled them as well and it is their job, one is a washer women, one a water boy and one a native translator as well as the butler and gardener. There are little notes next to some of the names such as 'fined 4 rupes for burning a pair of trousers' and ' gave the old Sais Rs 4, keeping Rs 2 back as a guarnatee that he does not make a vow with other servants'. How cool is that! Unfortunately there is not a family name in the book, but my son and I are assuming that they were British goverment or military in India at that time.So, to art journal in it not???

 Anyway, on to my JOY book. I forgot to take photos from the start, but basically I took out the pages using a craft knife. There were two red pages that I left in tact so that I could cover the inside spine. I then took the binder bit from an old A4 ring binder and lined it up on the spine. I made two holes and used eyelets to attach the binder in place. The eyelets were not quite deep enough to give a firm hold so I also had to use two brads to secure it. I hammered the pin part of the brads into the indent of the binder so that they don't move around.

The spine with the brads showing

I have cut an assortment of pages,

Such as xmas paper, index cards, kraft paper and the pages of the christmas carol book.

No doubt I will add more as December comes around. I am going for a more art journal type book this year rather than a scrapbook/mini book style. I want to concentrate more on the actual journalling but I will include photos as well as I love looking back over previous xmas books I have made and seeing the photos of our traditions.

TFL

Sami x