One of the first things you need to do when creating a junk journal is decide what kind of paper you are going to use. In my last challenge post, I showed you the copy paper I am using.

This weekend I dyed it in several colors.

First, I took one package of grape flavored dry drink mix and added it to 1 1/2 cups of hot water from the tap. Then I put about 50 sheets of paper(I didn’t count it) in a 13 x 9 baking pan and poured all of the liquid over it.

I also mixed up some blue using half a bottle of blue food coloring.

I let them sit for about an hour, until most of the liquid was absorbed. Then I seperated them out on a table outside to dry in the sun. It was windy, so I weighed them down.

I also did yellow and red,although those are not in my journal color schemes. I mixed red and blue to get a different shade of purple. I also coffee dyed some. The weather turned rainy, so I ended up drying most of it in the oven. I simply put the whole stack of one color on a cookie sheet and placed in the oven at 200 degrees for a few hours. It wasn’t completely dry in the middle so I spread it out on my dining table til the next day.

I stacked it all up, and put it under a few heavy books to flatten overnight.

I now have a colorful stack of paper for my journals! Here are a few of my favorite sheets. Some were dried in the oven on a pizza pan with holes in it. The yellow and red and green are food color. The lighter purple is drink mix and the darker is red and blue food color mixed. The last is coffee dyed. I ran an extra cup of water through the pot after my husband  was done drinking coffee for the day. By layer them in different directions while wet, you can acheive some great designs.

Next post, making my first cover and adding signatures.