What does a finished Wreck This Journal look like?

Here's my "One More Thing" about Wreck this Journal. If you didn't know, I've spent a few years finishing this book up and covering it through blog posts extensively. Here is the final product, as finished as it will ever be! Here's to moving on to new things and celebrating past accomplishments.

My Journey With Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal 

1) The Beginning.....
2) WTJ Part Two
3) WTJ Part Three - Vengeance 
4) WTJ Part Four - The Reckoning
5) WTJ Part Five - Return of the Journal (Final)

Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes

Did you know that 2017 will mark the 10 year anniversary of Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal? I have covered the book extensively in the past and took finishing the book very seriously. Recently, I finally decided to "retire" my book and I've got to admit, I kind of missed working on it now that it's done. Then one day, a spontaneous trip to the mall brought me the inspiration to buy one of Keri Smith's other books. I knew there was one in particular that would scratch my itch for a new Wreck this Journal. That book was "Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes," which in my opinion is almost a direct sequel to Wreck this Journal.

The idea is the same - each page has a set of directions on them and you have to complete whatever strange task the book asks of you, often times "wrecking" or "messing up" your journal in the process. Both beckon you to push the book itself to its physical limits. How much can you ruin the book without technically ruining it?

Mess this Journal - The Front Cover

One of the pages in Mess prompts you to destroy the front and back cover, but I think that one is a gimme. This once pristine and sharply designed book will hardly resemble itself after a few good sessions of messing up. I've already doodled a few additions to cover, and used it as a mat for my glue gun once or twice now. 

Mess This Journal - Ink Drop Characters

 I think this page turned out super cute. I kind of want to go back and add more characters. There's still some white space left on the page!

Mess This Journal - Only Blue Things

This is very similar to a prompt in Wreck this Journal that makes you collect only white things. The first thing I thought when I saw this page was: "So many more options for cool things now!" White things were very limiting to collect while Blue seems like it'd be almost overwhelmingly various. I immediately installed a hinged pocket and some blue jeans so I could stuff more blue things onto the page in the future.

Mess This Journal - Draw for only 10 seconds at a time

I loved this little exercise so much that I extended it over the entire page. It was fun to try to come up with new things constantly and the strange "stream of consciousness" doodles that followed. I noticed that some of the drawings that are next to each other have started off with similar initial shapes/lines but kind of transform into a different thing as the sketch went on. I've marked this off as my first "completed" Mess page, mainly because I can't think of anything else I could possibly do to it directly. Done and done.

Mess this Journal - Draw a circle

Similar to the 10 second doodle prompt, this page requires you to draw a cirlce under all sorts of strange circumstances including circles "that talk" and circles drawn "with a dog sitting in the middle of the page." I had extra exuberance for these pages and ended up adding more prompts to this one, too.

Mess This Journal - Melt Crayon Shavings Here

Another page that I enjoyed. It requires you to take crayon crumbles, mash the pages together and then iron the pages to melt the crayon. I actually have a lot of crayon shavings accumulated because I have one of those awesome plastic Crayola crayon sharpeners (yes, be jealous.) So, I just dumped them out on the page and arranged them into what I thought might turn out to be a cool shape and ironed away. I'm kinda excited that it actually still kind of resembles a face, which was totally what I was going for.

Mess This Journal - Draw an object by tearing it

Mess This Journal - Mini Encyclopedia of Messes and Mistakes

Mess contains way more lists than Wreck this Journal did. This page particularly indulges my obsessive side- I get to pour over the pages and carefully list each one that has this or that quality. It's meticulously obsessive in a way that really doesn't matter or make sense, my favorite kind of obsession to partake in.

Mess This Journal - Smudge Log

Mess This Journal - Document Various Scribbles

My pal Racheal helped me out with this page with her orange crayon scribble. She asked which box I wanted her to put the scribble in and I said, "I don't know, you tell me? Maybe not in the box at all?" I think that scared her. It scares me too, that's the point!

Mess This Journal - Disaster Area 

Wreck This Journal - Random Things Here
What a future this Mess page has to look forward to.

The "disaster area" page reminds me of another page from Wreck This Journal that required you to glue random items to the paper. I remember that page filled up super quickly for some reason - I guess I have access to a lot of random things to glue down?

Mess This Journal - Abrasion Test: Sand this page

Mess This Journal - Thought Mess

My Mess Journal still has a long way before it's fleshed out, but there a lot to look forward to in the future. I thought it was worth documenting these prompts in their "before" stages since most of these pages will look completely different once they're done. 

Mess This Journal - Cut out this image and rearrange it

Mess This Journal - Lose your balance

Mess This Journal - Help the man let loose

After I did the Ink Character's page, I was lead to my first unexpected "mess surprise" when I realized that the ink had bled through the paper in a considerable amount... but mainly around this dude's eyes and lips, weirdly enough. I had to laugh because it immediately makes him look like a clown. But I think most men who try makeup for the first time kind of end up looking like that.... Yes, he wants to look like a beautiful woman, but he doesn't know how to yet. I'm going to help him out with that.

Mess This Journal - Color in with your eyes closed

So this started off as just a simple pear shape but I thought that was not hard enough so I added a bunch of other random stuff on the page for me to color, too.

Mess This Journal - Alter this image

I'm thinking about making their hats into giant soup bowls. 
One guy doesn't have a soup bowl hat though, how sad :'(

Mess This Journal - Deface this room

Honestly, this prompt freaks me out. After living in my own place for a while, I've come to realize the importance of a clean room. After all the time I've spent organizing, vacuuming, and decluttering, to mess up this room on purpose just seems wrong! That's why I think this page is really smart. I love the insightful ways that Keri Smith tries to get us out of our heads through simple works of art.

Mess This Journal - Delete or erase something

Mess This Journal - Something that will go moldy

So, there's one line I will not cross when it comes to my Keri Smith books, and that is using rotting food on the pages. Past experiments have lead me down a path of sugar ants and stickiness that I don't ever care to endure again. With that being said, I think I followed the directions of this page perfectly!  I made tiny versions of Wreck this Journal and Mess out of Play Doh, which can easily become moldy again when you add water to the compound. Get it, moldy? I crack myself up.

Mess This Journal - Use this page as a palette

When I'm painting or using pens I actually do like to have a paper like this where I can wipe off excess ink or test marker colors. It's not a very pretty page, but it's what the other side of creativity looks like sometimes. 

Mess This Journal - While drawing a line, have someone bump the book

I had my boyfriend help me with this one and the finished product cracked me up. He did a great job randomly jarring me around, I never knew when to expect it.  I decided not to correct the lines when pushed and instead improvised with the "mistakes" still intact, hence this chick's awesomely big chin and ghosties with kitty mouths. I liked the idea of not having complete control on how "perfect" the drawings turned out. I think I will do another round of this random jarring when I decide to go back and color it.

Mess This Journal - Public Mess

I randomly "planted" some flowers that were not waterproof and will probably smear and smudge over time whenever the book gets wet. 

Mess This Journal - Fill in with all the colors you have on hand

Well, that's it for now. Stay tuned for more updates on my Mess journal, and a few little things I'd still like to share about my Wreck This Journal. By the way, if you haven't yet, check out my extensive coverage on WTJ here- start from the beginning, it's an epic journey.

What do you think, is Mess a book you would be interested in working on? Which of the pages are your favorites? Which would be the scariest to complete in your opinion? Let me know in a comment below.

Green Horn Shrine

I don't do many sculptural pieces but sometimes I get inspired by weird objects that I find, similar to when I made that Junk Wind Chime with an old crushed beer can. I don't know why I get these urges to make things with discarded junk, I suppose it's the pack rat in me that hates to see "interesting" things get thrown away. Anyways, this project started out as a hollowed out styrofoam block. "Perfect shape for a shrine!" I thought. I also knew the perfect thing to honor - my fleeting youth. I had just moved out of my parents house again and I was feeling both horribly naive and painfully aged at the same time. What a strange feeling it is, to have to be an adult but still feel like a baby! And so I dedicated my shrine to that.

According to Webster, a Green Horn is "a person who lacks experience and knowledge." It brings visions of a young buck that is just coming of age- The prime of their life, strong and youthful, their horns still budding and new, fresh and green, full of arrogance and naivety. Sometimes I feel like that buck. So in that way, this piece is somewhat of a self portrait.

 I used a lot of difference media to create the shine itself. Pretty much anything I could get my hands on that reminded me of youth, wonderment, and an overblown sense of entitlement. Mainly just old jewelry and various string, though. I loved adding the layers of stuff - I wanted it encrusted with shiny whimsical trinkets. Also, the doors on the shrine are totally functional. I wanted to be able to display this piece as "reserved" or "out in the open."

By the way, on the subject of shrines, I'm obsessed with them. There are so many beautiful examples out there of artist shrines that inspired me a lot. I love the idea of inserting symbols and relics into a shrine that are significant to only you, making them ultra personal and kind of "secretive" works of art for the viewer to decipher on their own.  Here are some amazing examples of artist shrines that embody those ideals. Some of their meanings are more obvious than others.

 By Jones Moore 

By Mai-Liss

By Collette Bain 

By Cindy La Ferle

Check out those artist pages for even more examples of shrines. Amazing work by talented people. Also, if this has got you curious on how to make your very own personal shrine, here are a few tutorials to get you started!

Shadow box shrines made with dollar store frames by Cut Out and Keep

Paper Shrine Template by Stampers Anonymous 

Make a Gratitude Shrine by Crizmac

Wreck This Journal Part V - Return of the Journal

Hello world! It's been a while. Three years to be exact. A lot has happened in the time that has passed, but most importantly my Wreck this Journal continues to decay more and more every day. Wreck this Journal was one of my blog's most popular subjects, and it continues to be one of my most favorite projects I've ever worked on. Over the years I have experimented with many ways to wreck my journal, but it never occurred to me that one element would continue to wreck it long after I got tired- Time itself.

I wanted to document how much has changed since the last time I updated. The change is especially noticeable if you go all the way back to my first post about WTJ those many years ago. Go ahead and catch up with my progress if you haven't yet....

My Journey With Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal 

1) The Beginning.....
2) WTJ Part Two
3) WTJ Part Three - Vengeance 
4) WTJ Part Four - The Reckoning

Wreck this Journal - The front cover's changes over time. Check out how wrinkly it gets and that doodle in pink paint pen that slowly fades away. 

So let's take a look at what I've been up to for the past 3 years..... *cracks open journal*

Wreck This Journal - The Title Page. This page is weird and kind of shrunken down because of all the times I've had to tape/glue/sew the binding back shut.  

Here is my Wreck this Journal table of contents page. I had to make my own, since it isn't provided with one to begin with. I think creating a table of contents is an excellent way to keep your journal more "organized." I can't tell you how many times I had an idea or an item to put in my journal but had to spend five minutes flipping through it to find that specific page... the table of contents is a total game changer in that sense. And besides, you already numbered the pages, it's just begging you to make a table of contents somewhere!

Also, check out how many crossed out pages there are... all the ones that I can say are 100% finished to my best ability! Almost every page has something on it already, but not all of them were followed through completely. More on that later, though. 

The instructions page, personally one of my favorite illustrations I've done in this book. The yellow is bleeding through from the next page, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked with the drawing's composition already! I think that's one of Wreck this Journal's themes - unexpectedly beautiful results.

Materials and Add your Own Numbers pages. I took the materials page literally and found or used pretty much everything mentioned in the list. Except for combs, because they're evil and I hate them. Watch out for combs. 

Crack the Spine and Leave This Page Blank.... When my mom saw my doodle of the journal getting its spine broken, she thought it was a rooster. If you went to high school with me you will recognize the hideous creature on the right as a "Boobybutt" since it is made out of a butt and a pair of boobs at the same time :D

Stand here and wipe your feet - This page is kind of cute because I got my cousins to help me when they were still really little. Their tiny feet fit perfectly on the page! They aren't so little anymore now though... time flies.

Pour coffee on this page- The coffee doesn't appear to be faded at all.

Poke Holes in this page using a pencil - This is a classic Wreck this Journal page because it's one of the first tasks that Keri Smith asks you to accomplish and it really helps push you out of your comfort zone. I love seeing the many different interpretations of this page in particular. Most people finish this page in some way.

Eat your enemies - wait, that doesn't have anything do with wrecking my journal!

Gross... glad to see the dirty handprints page hasn't changed much at all, either.

Wreck This Journal - Color this entire page

Wreck This Journal- Throw something dipped in paint

Wreck this Journal - Press Flowers Here

Scratch using a sharp oject - I can't even remember what the object was. A safety pen I think. And then I scratched it with a fork, because why not?

Do rubbings with a pencil- I waited too long to do this page and as a result, no amount of coloring or pencil shading could make any rubbing outlines appear - the paper was too worn and soft by then. So, I pulled the artist's equivalent of an Ashlee Simpson on SNL and completely phoned it in by drawing a king skull and a big fat fly head over everything. 

Tear strips, rip it up / Tape or stable these pages together - This works out because I was able to keep the strips intact!

Fill this page with circles - I like making hinges on things. So I hinged together two beer coasters with tape.

I decided to document my (apparently evil) dessert instead of an entire meal. The guy wearing a hardhat and holding a microphone while standing on a cupcake is from a birthday card I made up for our office supervisor. He's short, works in construction, and likes to yell a lot - I can't believe I found the perfect clip art for that very specific description.

Chew On This - I think this page turned out pretty cool, if not a little bit gross. I'm just glad I did the chewing before I put all of that rotting food in my book (ice cream sandwiches, gushers, dirt, gum, mmmm tasty) 

Make a paper airplane - well it is on paper, does that count?

Wrap   Keep something on this page - I decided to keep a pocket full of random clutter. Except for the special tiny book I made out of scrap paper.

"Please never stop what you're doing!" OK, I won't! There are a few other cute messages I wrote in this book, but this one is my favorite.

Tongue Painting- This page is a mess. The little dancing women figures on the left page were drawn on transparency paper and made into overlapping stickers. There used to be a little bit of a blue popsicle stain in the tongue painting part, but it has long since faded away.

Write one word over and over / Tear out and crumple - Um, well, this page is what it is. There are a few "break up pages" in my book, embarrassingly enough, but I do have to find it funny my Wreck This Journal survived longer more than one long term relationship.  While that all feels like a lifetime ago, my journal serves as a constant.

I tried to press flowers on this page, too, but unfortunately I was too aggressive in my wrecking and now all that is left of those pretty flowers are the sticks. 

Wreck this Journal - Pick up the journal without using your (scissor) hands.

Do a really ugly drawing - Poop is so funny. 

I kind of find the lack of decay in the Aisle of Gushers kind of fascinating. They've been stewing in here for a good three years now and they're still as "gushy" as the day I put them in there. There must be a lot of preservatives in those things! And we put this stuff in our bodies, and we give it to our children as a fun snack. Gushers are delicious though so I'm likely not to change my ways regardless. I'm just lucky my journal just didn't randomly turn into a giant anthropomorphic watermelon after adding these in (does anyone get that reference?)

As the great philosopher Zoolander once said: "This is how you get ants!"

Wreck this Journal - Pretend you are doodling on the back of an envelope

Add fruit stickers here / Make paper chains 

Journal Golf - I don't think my journal could stand up on it's own like this anymore!

Wreck This Journal - Bring this book in the shower with you

Wreck This Journal - Rub here with dirt

Test page - This page actually ended up coming in super handy. I used it when I was cleaning out my marker bag. Many brave heroes were laid to rest that day.

When I last wrote about my WTJ, this page was the only one holding the two giant halves of my book together, by a little sliver of paper. It's weirdly appropriate that this was page I ended up having to sew through. 

Details of the stitches. I haven't had any trouble with my book since sewing it back together!

A place for your grocery Netflix list - Did you know that Netflix didn't add a "Watch Later" list to their service until 2013? Before that, you just had to remember what you wanted to watch.  Or, write it down in a WTJ for example. The list is way outdated now, and most of the stuff here isn't even in their library anymore! I continued to mark off items as I watched them, though. I'm actually kind of proud by how many I ended up watching. Sometimes by chance, sometimes because I actually referred back this list. Convenient! 

Add stamps here - I managed to acquire all sorts of weird stamps! Lots of Canadian ones and some from the UK. Even a few from prison. I had to edit this photo a little bit to protect people's privacy. 

Wreck this Journal- Cover this page with white things. I love how all these white things are discoloring at a different rate. Some turn gray, some turn yellow, and some haven't aged a day.

Wreck This Journal - Scribble Wildly Using Borrowed Pens

Make a mess and clean it up - For a while I used this page for a "bucket list" type list but after a while I just decided that the best way for me to clean up the "mess of my life" is to be satisfied with it just the way it is.

Doodle over top of this page- One of the more popular illustrations from my journal.  I swear, it's that rich blue color that draws everyone in. Fun fact! The blue pen I used to draw this was made out of  recycled waterbottles. 

Wreck This Journal - Page of Good Thoughts. Pro life tip: Always thank someone for compliments instead of trying to down play it. What are you doing, calling them a liar?

Wreck this Journal - Write Carelessly Now

Wreck This Journal - Glue Random Items Here
I liked Chewbacca before he was cool again.

Wreck this Journal - Cut through several layers

X-ACTO blade powers, activate!

Glue a page from a magazine - So, I got my hands on a magazine that was all about mushrooms. It's called Fungi Perfecti and they are the most adorably impassioned people in the world. They really love their mushrooms! Then I imagined what all the mushrooms would look like if they could emote and have faces. The results are pure perfecti. 

I think these doodles came out so cute that I may do a series of them in the future.

Here's a detail of what is behind the mini pages. Giant Scooby Doo burger shroom!

Wreck this Journal - Color outside of the lines

Wreck this Journal - Connect the dots from memory

Invite people to draw here - I wish I would have collected more interesting doodles from people. There's still time though! 

Draw with glue - I was "stuck" on this page for a while *rimshot* mainly because glue is kind of hard to get to show up on white paper as a design. So I just colored over it with a bunch of crayons, and then drew some hipster diamonds all over everything else.

Wreck this Journal - Trace Your Hand

Wreck this Journal - Create a drawing using a piece of your dog hair.

This is another "guest page" inspired by a person who I am no longer dating. They drew the weird creature on the left and I colored and over worked everything like I usually do. The little eyes are actually tabs that flip up and have rude blurbs underneath them.

Wreck This Journal - Page for four letter words

Document Time Passing - I can still remember how relieved I was to get home from that road trip. I documented the last 30 minutes of it and I felt every minute in its entirety. 

Wreck This Journal - Scrub this Page. With a steel wool so it comes out spic and span! 

Hide a secret message somewhere - There are actually many different secret messages written in this book. So many I couldn't even tell you what they are or where in the book they are!

Write a list of more ways to wreck this journal - This page is a weird scribbly mess! I tried my best to complete these tasks... "letting it go" will be a hard thing to do though. 

Wreck This Journal - Sleep with the journal

Stain log? More like "PAIN LOG!" I'm going to add that in one day.

Doodle over top of this page and in the margins - I made a little robot with metallic paint chips! 

Funny story about this page. One day I'm driving in my car and I start noticing all these sugar ants. Not a huge amount but enough for me to take note. Anyways I could NOT find where they were coming from, but luckily they eventually receded instead of infesting my entire car. A few weeks later I uncovered my Wreck this Journal from my car (IDK sometimes I take it with me) and I suddenly found out where those sugar ants were coming from. Apparently I had spilled a Wendy's frosty all over this page.... it was still kind of sticky, and peppered with sugar ants. Poor little guys didn't stand a chance. Anyways  I just smooshed the effected area back down and pretended it never happened. The Frosty kind of works as glue now.  

We've finally made it to the back cover of my Wreck This Journal *closes book shut... sort of*

So there it is.. my Wreck this Journal in all its glory. I think I'm down to about 14 pages that are incomplete but I have to admit they've been a pill to finish. There are a few reasons that they're holding me back, but I'm going to write another post on those stubborn pages later. I just wanted to do an update on this subject since it's been such a long time. Expect more posts soon, I have lots to still discuss.

Update 11/28/16:
After thinking on it for a long time, I've decided that I'm not going to finish those last pages after all. The journal is as finished as it will ever be, and that's okay. I think that those final pages are a testament to how difficult it is to "completely finish" a Wreck This Journal. It's an important lesson for me as well, that the journal will never be "perfect," like our lives that are forever works in progress. I think it's time for me to let go of this particular book. I thank everyone for keeping up with me over the years with my journal and taking this creative journey with me. And it has been quite the journey.

Expect one more thing about Wreck this Journal very soon. A special surprise as a thank you to all the readers. Stay tuned. - Edit: Here it is!

Feel free to share your journey with Keri Smith's Wreck this Journal below in the comments. I'd love to hear what you think about my interpretations of the pages.