My 'Wreck This Journal'

Today I thought I'd show you guys a few pages from my Wreck This Journal!

To give you a bit of background information, the following books were written and created by Keri Smith and fall under the Self Help/Well Being category. I discovered another one of her books, How to Be An Explorer of the World, a little over a year and a half ago and it lead me to the motherlode. Wreck this Journal is the only one I've come close to finishing, and I've made it my New Years' resolution to complete all of them.

Wreck This Journal is definitely my favourite out of all of them. Most of you might not know this about me, but I'm very passionate about visual arts. I discovered this book when I didn't have any art classes to attend, and I really needed a creative outlet. It's also small enough to throw in your bag so you can pull it out when you have an idea for one of the pages.


Now for the exciting part; here's a few of my favourite pages! I haven't finished the whole journal, so it's still a work in progress.

"This page is for handprints or fingerprints. Get them dirty then press down."

"Color this entire page."

Whenever I show this book to my friends, they stop on this page, look at me with a slightly horrified expression and say, "Tess! You haven't coloured it! You cheated!" And to those remarks, I try to explain that I thought a collage would be more visually interesting. (You get a gold star if you know which magazine these are from!)

 "Press leaves and other found things."

"Write one word over and over..."

"Collect fruit stickers here."

I honestly can't tell you how weirded out my friends were when I pounced on them as soon as they pulled out fresh fruit for lunch. Most of them teased, but others joined in, even bringing me exotic fruit stickers from home!

 "Sew this page."

Yes, I really did sew buttons onto a piece of paper. This particular page is responsible for the bulkiness of my journal. The picture I've taken does not do this page justice; it looks a lot better in person than online, and the colours look so lovely together. If you were to do the same to your journal, I recommend taping the back of the page so the knots don't get tangled or come undone.

"Make prints using an ink pad and cut vegetables."

To do this page, I stole a few pieces of cut up celery from my mom while she was making egg salad one night. After dipping them into acrylic paint, the results are a few cute smiles and some broken looking hearts.

"Trace your hand."

I love how this page turned out; to create the multicoloured effect, I simply used a pencil crayon that has a ton of separate colours infused in it.




The other books by Keri Smith that I own:

How to be an Explorer of the World

This book is great for travelling, and really helps you look at the world from a new perspective. Its pages allow you to document your surroundings in an interesting way.

This is NOT a Book

This journal invites you to change its pages into other objects.
An example from the journal: 
This is a test of endurance. 
1. Hold This is Not a Book above your head for as long as possible.
2. Write your time here: ____

Mess

The title explains the whole book perfectly. Personally, I think it's purpose is to make people who normally can't stand messes let loose a little.

Finish This Book

It might be painfully obvious, but I have not in fact finished this book (if you will). This is Keri's latest creation, having only been released this past summer. This title also sums up the book perfectly; you must finish the challenges on its pages.


I hope I've inspired you to check out Keri Smith's books. If you think you're too busy to complete these in the near future then they're the perfect thing to have while on summer vacation. They also work as great gifts for your creative friends, or people who just need to unwind.




Do you have any of Keri's creations?


- Tess