Wreck This Journal

A few years ago, I got the 'Wreck This Journal' by Keri Smith for Christmas. I then bought myself another one which had a couple of extra things to do so I thought I would make a blog post about them :) I'll update this whenever I do a new page.

Wreck This Journal #1

Step One. Add Your Own Page Numbers.

So this page isn't that exciting at all to be honest. I coloured in the gaps in the letters like I used to do as a child and just added the numbers from 0-9 at the bottom of the page and coloured them all differently, experimenting with my new Pro-marker pens.









Step Two. Crack the spine.

Thought I'd at least make the page colourful before I began defacing the book. I just used regular highlighters and then drew cloud bubbles round it before colouring them in.


















I'm one of those people who loves taking care of books and absolutely hate when the spine of a book is bent or when the page corners are folded down. Drives me crazy to deface a book! Therefore, this task was quite difficult for me to do. But surprisingly, I enjoyed it.













Step Three. Leave this page blank on purpose.

The colours added to the previous page can be seen now. I decided that I wanted to do something to the 'blank' page and thought the "No" troll face meme would be funny. 









Step Four. Stand Here.

Sheep slippers ftw (y). 















After I stood with the slippers, I traced round my feet ...

and then drew the decorations that were on my socks.

Piggies.

I didn't really know what to do with the background so I just used newspaper. 

Step Five. Pour, spill, drip, spit, fling your coffee here.

I don't drink coffee so I just grabbed some granules at a friends and mixed them up before squashing the lot on the page. It now stinks to high hell of coffee but hey ho!

Really boring page to be honest... I could have done something interesting with the coffee.

Step Six. Poke Holes in this page using a pencil.


I wish I'd been more original with this page to be honest. It's really boring and rushed. The idea was having a bow and arrow that shot all the holes but it doesn't make sense... Maybe I need to colour the background in but not sure what to do.





Step Seven. Draw Fat Lines and thin. 

I wasn't really sure how to go about this one and make it interesting so I just drew lines in different colours and different widths. The fatter ones were made with sharpies and highlighters and the thin ones were made with felt tip pens and normal pens/pencils. I then decorated the opposite page with cloud bubbles.

Step Eight. This page is for handprints or fingerprints.

So I made fingerprints in the shape of bugs! Finger painting is fun but messy. There are bees, caterpillars and butterflies. 












Step Nine. Colour this entire page.

Chose to do a puzzle pattern on this page in order to colour it in a fun way. I used my sharpies to colour each puzzle piece and tried to make sure that no colour was next to or diagonal to the same colour. This might just be my favourite page in this WTJ.













Step Ten. Throw Something.

I took small bits of paper, dipped in two different colours of paint (blue and orange) and threw them with my friend to try and score 'points'. Because it stuck to the opposite page, it got a bit messed up.

Step Eleven. Press Leaves and other found things.

In order to stop all the bits falling off and onto my floor constantly, I taped them down in the book. 



















Step Twelve. Scratch using a sharp object. 

I didn't really have an idea for this page, so just grabbed some sharp everyday objects and scratched the outline of the object with that object. 

I then outlined the objects in silver sharpie to help them stand out and wrote what object I had used each time. I used scissors, a nail file, a crocodile clip, nail clippers and a staple remover.

Step Thirteen. Do some rubbings with a pencil.

I just got every single coin here in the UK from 1p to £2 and did a rubbing of them in different colours. I also used a Spanish coin, a Lego brick, Ptas, Pesetas, a six pence from 1957 and a Canadian dollar.















Step Fourteen. Scribble Wildly.

Again, this one looks lame. I literally didn't put any effort into this one whatsoever. Just scribbled. Probably not with reckless abandon.

Step Fifteen. Tear strips. Rip it up.

I coloured each row in and then drew a symbol on each one before ripping the page to the bottom of the direction bubble.

I then taped the page back together so that it would turn like a normal page and so that I could glue the page behind it to this one as that was the instruction for that page. 













Step Sixteen. Draw lines while in motion.

For this page, I drew three dots in three different colours and then placed post it notes on each one stating what they related to. Blue was for the bus, red for the car and green for walking. I then did each line as I went round and finished with a coloured dot at the ends. 








Step Seventeen. Fill this page with circles.

I'm not sure how I feel about this page. It's a bit busy but I wasn't really sure how else to do it and it does look really colourful. 








Step Eighteen. Document your dinner.

This might just be my least favourite page. Or one of them at least. Wiping ketchup over it wasn't nice at all and it stinks to high heaven. I also just stuck the wrappers of whatever I had eaten at the time, rather than putting every dinner in there. 



Step Nineteen. Chew on this.

I drew an apple with a bite missing for this page which I thought this was a good idea. I'm not sure whether I will actually chew on this page as the other side is full of ketchup and other food and mushy things really creep me out!







Step Twenty. Make a funnel. 

First of all, I cut the template out of the page...













I then coloured the funnel in different colours to make it look pretty but left the words and images white so they stood out..













And then folded the funnel up and taped it in place with some sellotape. 












This was the part I was worried about to be honest. I didn't want the paper to collapse but thankfully, it didn't and I had a small drink so that I didn't get pen all over me. 













Step Twenty One. Tear out & Crumple.

First I coloured the entire page in with pink sharpie and then tore it out. I crumpled the entire page up, smoothed it out and then crumpled it up up another way. 











Step Twenty Two. Tongue Painting.

This one grossed me out to be honest and probably should have been the first thing I did because I don't want to lick a book that's been covered in dirt, ketchup and pocket lint.

Step Twenty Three. Write one word over and over.

I don't really know why I chose the word 'love'. I think it was just because everybody needs a bit of love in the world. I can tell you that after writing it out so many times, it no longer looks like a word though!





Step Twenty Four. Tie a string to the spine and swing wildly.

This one was a bit difficult in that it was hard to document it. I started off by painting a background where I could stick photographs. 









Step Twenty Five. Pick up the journal without using your hands.

This one took a lot of paint and about 5 black sharpies that didn't want to work on paint. I painted the page red and went over all the letters in sharpie where the paint had covered them. 














I then took three photos and placed them on the opposite page. I picked up the journal with my feet.

Here you can see the horrible sharpie playing up. Sharpie and paint apparently don't like each other.











Step Twenty Six. Climb up High, drop the journal.

I started off by painting one side of the page green and one page blue. I then used cotton wool dipped in white paint to create clouds and wisps of clouds making it look like a sky. I don't really know why I painted it green and not completely blue, but I quite like it. 


The next step is to do the action and try to take photos of the journal whizzing through the air.


Step Twenty Seven. Compost this page.

My plan for this page is to compost a separate piece of paper so I don't have to remove those pages and then stick it either in the book or inside a plastic zip lock bag into the journal with a background around it.

Step Twenty Eight. Do a really ugly drawing.

I decided to cover the page in sticky labels and re-do the title in different colours to make the page look more interesting. I then got members of my family to draw different things they thought were ugly or disgusting.








Step Twenty Nine. Place sticky things here.

This is another of my least favourite pages. I hate sticky things in books with a passion and this page now just looks and smells disgusting. It's covered in honey, syrup and icing from a cake. 

Step Thirty. Make a paper chain.

I started off by cutting each strip out and colouring them with felt tip pens in different colours. I ended up with at least 2 of each colour. 

I then created the paper chain and tried to keep to a pattern of red, green, blue, pink, light green, purple, dark blue and so on.

Step Thirty One. Collect fruit stickers.

This one reminds me of my childhood because I used to take the stickers off fruit and stick them in a book. Usually I would do it whenever I went round my grandparents because they always had fruit but later on, my Nan used to keep watch while I stole them off the fruit in the supermarket. Oops! 

Step Thirty Two. Cover this page using office supplies.

So I used post it notes in different shapes and colours, one ink cartridge, a couple of staples and some paper clips. I might add to this later but I'm not sure.






Step Thirty Three. Bring this book into the shower.

This one scared me a bit, mainly because of my OCD about books and keeping them nice and also because I'd already done most of the other pages before this one so I wasn't sure how the other pages would fare. I'm worrying too much about it I think, I mean the idea of the journal is to wreck it. 

Step Thirty Four. Walk the journal.

Started off this page by painting the opposite page to create a background for my images.


Step Thirty Five. Rub here with dirt.

I know the intention is to wreck the journal but I didn't anticipate this much damage being done! 

Step Thirty Six. Test Page. 

Here, I did a test swatch of everything I had. I used sharpies, highlighters, pens, Biro pens, sakura souffle pens, old pens, pencils, wax crayons, gel pens, old sharpies, metallic pens, ink, writing pens, markers, water colour paints, acrylic paints, pro-markers and nail varnish. I separated them into sections and added to them if I could.

Step Thirty Seven. Drip something here, make a print.

So here, I dropped a bunch of different acrylic paint colours onto the page to create a print when I folded the page back together. The only annoying thing about this was trying to keep the page from sticking together.












Step Thirty Eight. Sew this page.

For this page, I took a scrap of paper and some cotton and sewed a flower together before sticking the scrap paper down on the page. Not very creative I know. 

Step Thirty Nine. Glue a random newspaper here.

So instead of just one page from the newspaper, I cut out extracts and glued them all in to create a collage look. I then cut out letters to create the title and put them over the top of that. The only thing I don't really like is that the top left hand corner is green rather than black and white. 

Step Forty. Grocery lists.

Pretty self-explanatory page. Not quite finished, but you get the idea. 

Step Forty One. Collect all the stamps off your mail.

Also not finished as most of the mail I get doesn't come with stamps (A few of these came from nicking them off the family's post!)







Step Forty Two. Trace the things in your bag. 


So first I traced round everything I had in my bag at that point and then coloured each one in a different colour and outlined it in silver and wrote what it was. In my bag, I had my diary, hairband, purse, iPod, keys, hairbrush, spray, lip gloss and camera.

Step Forty Three. Cover this page in white things.

So I covered the pages in cotton ear buds. I now regret that decision, it looks like a mess.








Step Forty Four. Scribble using borrowed pens.

Instead of me scribbling, I asked each person to scribble under their name and just let them pick any old pen colour they wanted. I'm not sure how I feel about this page. It's messy but that's what the journal is about I suppose.
Step Forty Five. Make a sudden movement with the journal.









Step Forty Six. Doodle on the cover, the title page, instructions, copyright page. 

So instead of doodling, I found some old stickers and just covered the front and back cover with those.

FRONT ---> 

















BACK 
<---

Step Forty Seven. Page of good thoughts.

Another page that I couldn't think of an idea for so I just wrote out the lyrics to my favourite song of the time - Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift ft The Civil Wars. 



Step Forty Eight. Make prints using vegetables.




Step Forty Nine. Ask a friend to do something destructive to this page.

So this is actually from my ex friend. It's not great if I'm perfectly honest, I wish something more creatively destructive had been done to it and I really wish she hadn't licked the bloody book because that's just disgusting.

Step Fifty. Write carelessly now.

This page was a quick one, I just scribbled down another Taylor Swift lyric and bam, done. Again, I wish that it was nicer but hey ho. 















Step Fifty One. Glue random items here.

Another page that isn't finished. I quite literally glued random items here (some are stuck cause they're stickers) that I found whilst clearing out my wardrobe. My plan is to keep going until there's no white space left on the page.


Step Fifty Two. Infuse this page with a smell of your choosing.









Step Fifty Three. Cut through several layers. 

For this page, I stuck a few other layers of paper into the journal and cut through those. I did the words by continuously drawing with a biro over the lines until the paper cut. 




















Step Fifty Four. Tear this page out and wash. 

First step was to tear the page out. I tried to do this as neatly as I could...

I then coloured the writing in pink and the background in blue...















And then put it in the wash... 











Step Fifty Five. Colour outside of the lines.

For this page, I took my blue sharpie and just coloured outside of the circle and outside of the other lines. Again this one is pretty boring.














Step Fifty Six. Connect the dots from memory.














Step Fifty Seven. Hang the journal in a public place. 

This page was completed by my family one Christmas when I just placed the journal in the middle of the table and told them to 'go wild'. Of course, my dad and granddad immediately began drawing rude things. I love this page because my granddad died a few months afterwards and this makes me smile whenever I see it.

Step Fifty Eight. Collect pocket lint

I'll be honest, I don't know what pocket lint is. I'm guessing it's just the crap found in your pockets? As I had no idea when starting this page, I decided to clean out the tumbledryer of it's 'lint' which created this disgusting beauty. It's super soft, but god knows what's actually concealed in there... o.o 










Step Fifty Nine. Trace your hand.

I really enjoyed this page for some reason. I traced round my hand lots of times onto the page, not caring about overlapping and then grabbed my sharpies and coloured each section of the hand in a different colour. I think this page looks really cool!







Step Sixty. Draw with glue.

For this page, I found a really old '3D glue pen' I had from the 90's and managed to squeeze enough out for this amazing art. 


















Step Sixty One. Document various substances. 

This is mostly full of nail varnish, lipstick and various pens. It's not really the exciting page I was hoping for it to be.









Step Sixty Two. Document a Boring Event in Detail. 

So for this page, I didn't have a clue what I was going to do so I just wrote down everything I did on the 4th January 2012 (My mum's birthday) and my adventures making cake... 









Step Sixty Three. Create a drawing using a piece of your hair.

As you can probably tell, I couldn't get much hair off my hairbrush for this image and I certainly wasn't pulling any out the drain (vomits in corner). 




Step Sixty Four. Glue in a photo of yourself you dislike. Deface. (L)

Step Sixty Five. Draw lines using abnormal writing utensils. (R)

Step Sixty Six. Fill in this page when you are really angry. 

This might be one of my favourite pages, just because I got to use a quote from A Very Potter Musical (AVPM - YouTube it) It makes me chuckle every time I open up the book.













For this half of the page, I just wrote the word 'RAGE' in capitals spiralling around the instruction bubble. 















Step Sixty Seven. Write or draw with your left hand. 

I think I was drunk when I wrote this or something because what I've written doesn't even make sense. Despite that, I'm not too bad with my left hand and the drawing is fabulous ;) 





Step Sixty Eight. Find a way to wear the journal. (R)





Step Sixty Nine. This page is a sign, what do you want it to say?

I thought this would be funny... 














Also filled the other half with a KEEP CALM AND... message. Everyone should ship Drapple. Tom Felton does ;)











Step Seventy. Create a non-stop line.

I love this page but wish that I'd crammed the lines in a bit tighter together to give more of an effect. 







Step Seventy One. Space for negative comments. (R)

Step Seventy Two. Draw lines with your pen or pencil. Lick your finger and smear the lines. (L)





Step Seventy Three. A page for four letter words. 

If you are a child or just don't like bad words, turn away. There are possibly a few in here. 

Step Seventy Four. Glue in a page from a magazine.

For this one, one of the things to do was circle the words you liked so I highlighted them instead and created a background of the page before using letters cut from a magazine to create the title.









Step Seventy Five. Write with the pen in your mouth.

This page hurt. There's no other words for it. I have also discovered that I can't write with the pen in my mouth, mainly because it hurts but also because there's no control. 





Step Seventy Six. Give away your favourite page. (L)




Step Seventy Seven. Write Backwards. 

I love this page. I decided to write out the entire song lyrics of 'Back To Hogwarts' from AVPM (A Very Potter Musical) which is one of my favourite songs. It didn't even take that long to write. 



Step Seventy Eight. Document Time Passing. (L)

Step Seventy Nine. This Space is dedicated to internal monologue. (R)

Step Eighty. Scrub This Page. (L)

Step Eighty One. Hide a secret message somewhere in this book. (R)

Step Eighty Two. Sleep With the Journal. Describe the experience here.

So, I slept with it... Nothing really interesting happened... (obviously, that photo of me 'asleep' is a selfie with my eyes shut... I can't sleep on my left side anyway.) 





Step Eighty Three. Close the journal, write/scribble something on the edges. 

For this page, I just coloured the sides but unfortunately, due to the books size and the bleeding of other colours, you can't really see the colour anymore.

Step Eighty Four. Write a list of more ways to wreck this journal. (R)






Step Eighty Five. Stain Log. 

This is a work in progress... So far I've got foundation, mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, eyeshadow, lipliner, lipgloss, cover up stick and liquid eyeliner on the page but I plan to add more things that aren't makeup related. 












Step Eighty Six. Doodle over top of this page. (R)