Arts & Crafts joy box with mini journals

Welcome to Art in Real Life #7! It’s been awhile since I the last ‘Art in Real Life’ but I am happy to be back at making art for the joy of it.

The house-shaped compartment box caught my eye at a local consignment shop, so I bought it, took it home, and let it tell me what to put in it. The peg person was one I painted for myself and a test painting before I painted the family peg dolls for Christmas last year. Knowing I wanted to give the peg doll a home in this house, one of the colors had to be a soft blue. So I looked around my studio and found two calendars saved from previous years because I like the art and patterns. They helped define the William Morris/Arts & Crafts style with patterns and soft watercolor accents for the interior.

Bits & Pieces put together

Parts of hymns, ledger paper, and a map filled the rest of the ‘wallpaper’ of the sections. I purposefully left some of the compartments blank so the wood would show as the background. The shells are from shores visited where our grown children live. I doodled on one from Galveston while visiting our son’s family. The upper right corner is a wreath made from little shells gathered with my daughter and grandsons in Florida. The Etched ‘hope’ stone was bought at the coast in Oregon. An antique key from my husband’s father, acorns from the white oak in our front yard, and a pine cone from a walk in the woods. I have some wooden eggs in my studio stash, and they seemed to want to be painted and put in the little compartments.

Mini flip-through of the journals video

Below is a little video of the interior of the little square journals in making their home in this house-shaped joy box.

Joy box journals

Mini journal pages

Here are some of the interior pages of the house shadowbox journals:

This has been one of those projects done for the joy of doing it. It didn’t have a deadline and wasn’t for anything in particular, except for me working through some sadness, and finding beauty and comfort in the little things…

Blessings of comfort and beauty to You!

Valerie

Here is a link to the Washi tape used in the journals:

Washi tape set

The Amazon link above is from a product I have purchased and used in the above post. If you click on the link and purchase I receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything. A win/win! Thank you for your support.