Junk Journal January: first Make Nine finish for 2025

Junk Journal January is a wrap! I’m counting it as my first Make Nine 2025 finish to fulfill the “Online Challenge” prompt.

Make Nine 2025 tracker. Online Challenge prompt

Journal format and page spreads

For JJJ 2025 [Junk Journal January 2025], I made a square format, no-sew journal. 

No-sew junk journal.

After getting into the daily process of answering the prompts, I found myself creating compositions in 2-page spreads. Sometimes the composition was in response to a single prompt…

Day 30 prompt: fabric

… sometimes it combined multiple prompts.

Days 24 and 25 prompts: line and modern.

I liked working in a larger, 2-page space. Paint, color, and collage were used to unify the background. Similar marks were made across both pages, and often the spreads incorporated text, quotes, or poems relating to the prompt(s), that were hand lettered on the pages.

Days 26, 27, 28 and 29 prompts: movement, crumpled, sealed, and reveal.

Materials and techniques

For this year’s junk journal, I used techniques that I used in the past: acrylic and watercolor painting, collage, hand lettering, and drawing, and an occasional use of a rubber stamp. I did experiment with solar paste and stencils this time—on Day 18 with the “bright” prompt. Solar paste is a fun art supply and is very effective on a black background.

Solar paste medallions made with paste and stencils.

Starting with Junk Journal January in 2023, and followed by Junk Journal January and Junk Journal July in 2024, Junk Journal January 2025 is the fourth journal in my collection.

Junk Journals from 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Wrapping up the final week of Junk Journal January 2025

Today starts the last week of January and the final week of Junk Journal January 2025 Challenge. This Challenge has been an exercise in “showing up and doing the work.” Travel and long, busy days as a fabric rep sometimes leaves me tired and uninspired… that’s when the commitment to the process kicks in. Paraphrasing Picasso, “Exploration and creativity happens, but they must find you working.”

Day 21 prompt: map

Here are a few of my favorite journal pages and spreads from the month that started off somewhat mediocre, but turned out very well.

Days 6, 7 and 8 prompts: embossed, tuck spot, and antique.

After prompted to use tissue paper on this spread, the tissue paper was used again on other pages.

Days 20 and 21 prompts: tissue and map.

On the recommendation from a friend, I experimented with solar paste, a new-to-me art supply. It was used along with a stencil to create the medallions on the left-hand page of this spread.

Days 17, 18, and 19 prompts: fragile, bright, and bubble.

William Morris is one of my favorite printers, typographers, and designers. The aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts movement resonates today as much as it did back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Days 24 and 25 prompts: line and modern

A new 100 Day Project: Stitch Book 2025 with Ann Wood

This year, I’m doing the 100 Day Stitch Book Challenge 2025 with Ann Wood for my 100 Day Project. I was debating whether to join this Challenge (that started January 17) because I’m also working on Junk Journal January this month. After realizing the stitch book pages were only 5.5” x 7” in size, however, I thought the two Challenges would be manageable for the remainder of this month.

Day 3 of the Stitch Book Challenge 2025

Stitch Book supplies

The supplies for the Stitch Book Challenge are minimal, easily accessible, and the options are flexible:

• fabric(s) for twenty 5.5” X 7” book pages (this is the base fabric)
• threads for hand stitching
• fabric scraps

Improv patchwork scraps (left) and cotton/linen pages for a stitch book.

I’ll be using a cotton/linen blend fabric from Art Gallery Fabric’s Ink Perfect collection. It’s a remnant from a top I made last year. I was able to cut 12 pages from it.

The scraps I’m using are mostly patchwork strings and trimmings from various improv patchwork pieces I’ve created over the years. I have a small “inventory” of these pieces that I use for improv compositions should a piece require a “spark of something different” or to make a piece of patchwork larger. 

Day 2 of the Stitch Book Challenge 2025.

Improvisational Stitching

The Stitch Book Challenge encourages spontaneity in the stitching process. Starting without knowing, and working without a plan. I think my improv patchwork scraps will be an appropriate complement to the stitching on the pages. 

It will be good to get into a free-form stitching routine for 100 days with this Stitch Book 2025 Challenge. 

Of course, I’m doing Make Nine 2025. It’s my 7th year!

A new year with Make Nine 2025. Lucky number 7 for me! Who else is in?

Make Nine 2025 tracker.

I so love this Challenge! This will be my 7th year participating. I’ve fine-tuned the prompts over the years and use the ones with which I do best. My prompts keep me aware, help me be productive, yet are still flexible enough to accommodate something unexpected that [often] presents itself during the year.

Make Nine 2025 prompts

My prompts for 2025 are mostly classics from past worksheets. For 2025, I’ve added “Simple and Stress-free” which is an amendment of the “Fast and Fun,” or “Fun and Easy” prompt of previous years. The “stress-free” part is indicative of what’s needed in the world these days. Here are my nine:

• UFO x 2: there are two UFO [unfinished object] prompts. I need to whittle down some of the lingering half-finished projects that have accumulated over the years. I’m only choosing those that are good candidates for completion. Yes, there are projects that are justified to never cross the finish line—workshop projects, practice pieces, experimentations with or curiosities about a new technique. I consider these learning opportunities. They don’t need to be finished.

• Mend/upcycle: This checks the “sustainability” box. It keeps the focus on taking care of and using what we have, minimizing waste, and being kinder to the environment.

• Make it Again: one of my favorite and most successful prompts over the years.

• Simple and Stress-free: for the mindless patchwork, fun free-motion quilting, scrap and stash buster opportunities. Still being creative and doing something with one’s hands without the confines of a deadline, perfect seams, matching points, and perfect stitches. This prompt is purely for the process of making.

• On-line Challenge: I’ve come across several of these and usually participate in one or more of them during the year. They keep me on-task and help hone a skill or learn a new technique I’ve been curious about. It’s also a great means of meeting and finding other artists and creatives that like the same sorts of things I do.

• Wild Card x 2: I’m targeting one of the Wild Cards to doing, using, or learning something new—using a new pattern, a different substrate, different materials, etc. This is a variation on previous “Something New in ’22,” “New to Me in ’23,” and “Learn More in ’24” prompts. [And, I couldn’t come up with a rhyme for “25.”]

• Yarn: I’m hoping to find a stash-buster project to meet this prompt.

Documenting Make Nine projects and processes

I use a Make Nine worksheet to document my Make Nine makes. In addition to illustrating the project and writing a description, I’ve learned to include the date of completion on the worksheet. As the year progresses, my black/white worksheet comes alive with color. I also document the makes and processes with a blog post.

For example, here is my Make Nine worksheet from 2024. In January, 2024 it looked like this: 

Make Nine worksheet in January of 2024.

And, by the end of the year, it’s very colorful! 

Make Nine 2024 completed and colored worksheet.

Make Nine recaps from pervious years are:

• Make Nine 2019 recap—first year
• Make Nine 2020 recap—2nd year
• Make Nine 2021 recap—3rd year
• Make Nine 2022 recap—4th year
• Make Nine 2023 recap—5th year
• Make Nine 2024 recap—6th year

I’m looking forward to new makes and finishes this year. Anyone else going to Make Nine?

A new “Create Daily” tracker for 2025

With the new year, I’m starting a new Create Daily Tracker. It’s a revisit of the tracker/calendar format I used in 2020 for my Stitching Success Tracker, from Nerd Bucket blog. 

Create Daily tracker for 2025.

Year 6 of a daily creative practice

This will be the 6th year of recording a daily creative practice—doing something creative with my hands every day. Activities include things like slow stitching, quiltmaking, free-motion quilting, sewing, painting, drawing, stamp carving, etc. My “daily creating” can be as little as stitching for a few minutes, a row of knitting, to carving a new rubber stamp, free-motion quilting a kitty quilt, or sewing for an afternoon—if time permits. I’m going to color code the activities and the finishes again this year. 

This is what 2024 looked like. The tracker was successfully and fully colored in.

The Create Daily tracker for 2024 is complete.