Wreck This Journal - Unfinished Business ...

Though Wreck This Journal has finished for almost two weeks now, I've been waiting for this "unfinished business."

From Lesley Denford, my swap partner of Wreck This Journal, I got these beautiful pages and a lovely fabric trim which I'll be using it as a bookmark.


Look how cute is the girl with the orange hair!


And I love the hand print page, especially the message in the centre of the palm – I want to be the hand that holds the world. I’m thinking of having this page framed.

Thank You, Lesley!

And herewith my own swap pages. Among the pages is a little good luck gift (a green "devil" pouch and some buttons) I sent to Lesley for her yearlong music trip.


For Lesley's own blog here and for her yearlong music adventure here.

Wreck This Jouranl - The End

Wreck This Journal has finally come to an end and I have saved this last wreck as the finale.

At the beginning, when I read that I was to take the journal in the shower with me, I cringed at the thought of soaking the rather new journal wet. After the burning, the throwing, the hanging outside and the deliberate stomping on it, dumping it in water wasn't hard at ll. Now I looked back and wondered why I had made a big fuss of cracking the spine of a new journal! :)

I wouldn't say WTJ has given me a life altering experience. But I liked how it loosened me up and brought a belly laugh out of me every time. It reminded me that I needed to do something fun other then writing to nurture the creative spirit. And along the wrecking road, I had met some wonderful fellow creatives and hopefully we'll maintain our contacts. Through the realization of the need for fun plus connecting with new creatives, like Kim, I learn about Zentangle. I've ordered the kit and am looking forward to expand my creativity to include some zen drawings.

It was also interesting to note that during the WTJ, I had entered into one of those important reflective stages as a creative being. I had dived deep into the creative abyss and had come back with renewed insight and faith in myself. Did WTJ have a part of it? It might or it might not. But I'm a big believer of synchronicity and always on the look out of creative signs. So I'd say there are connections between the wrecking act and the digging deep. I'd like to think of them working on the subterranean level of the creative mind.

There you go, my last post on WTJ and may I say this to all fellow wreckers:

Thank you for you company and it's been a great pleasure to see all your fantastic wreck works!

You're all wreck stars! Keep shining! Keep laughing!

Wreck This Journal - Week 8

Sorry fellow wreckers, only 1 wrecking this week ... if it counted as a wrecking act at all. See pix!

And why no wrecking ---> because I'm really pissed off without a car. (If you recall from my last post, I got a minor car accident a few weeks' ago and the car is at the repairer this week ...). I don't want to bore you with all the inconvenient details of not having a car except this one.

You see, my house is quite far away from my office - 3 changes of train, a total of 1.5 hours. And we're in the middle of winter which means chill mornings with strong wind and showers. Imagine standing on the train platfrom 7 o'clock in the morning with wind & rain in you hair. Bloody miserable!!! And I still have to endure this ordeal for another week before getting my car back.

With all of these crankiness going on, I had no choice but to break the promise I had made to myself on Jan this year. (The promise: I was not to buy any clothes and / or accessories for 12 months.) I bought myself a pair of Dr Martens with Wings. (The one I'm wearing in the pix). Did I feel better? Ooooooh yes!!!

There you go my fellow wreckers, I'm a happy woman again! :)

Wreck This Journal - Week 7

I didn't do much wrecking this week and I'm blaming it to the minor car accident I had about two weeks ago.

Don't worry, no one got hurt and it wasn't my fault! But I got really annoyed about driving a car with a huge dent on the door and the paint work chipping away. Anyway the car was scheduled for repairwork next Monday but I'll need to wait for 2 weeks before I could have it back. I think I'm acutally a bit pissed off!

And then Pepper's diahorrea came back the second time and we (me and my vet) had no idea what was causing it. My poor little doggie prince hasn't been himself for awhile.

So all in all, here are a few pix of my wreck work. I hope you all had a better week than mine. ;)

Wreck This Journal - Week 6

As I'm in the middle of watching Torchwood: Children of the Earth, this is going to be short.

Another "installation art" of mine - a paper fan made from one of the pages coming out from the Journal.



And I re-assemble some of the pages.



Hope you enjoy it and I sure did.

(Shit, they just killed Captain Jack Harkness!!!)

Wreck This Journal - Week 5

4 weeks down the wrecking road and I've learn a bit of my wrecking style.

I enjoy cutting, tearing, crumpling, making windows and holes of the pages. And the little rebel in me also took up her stand and refused to follow the instructions on some of the pages for wrecking. Combing these two, I have created these.

Hide & Seek





Window of the Lady Bugs


Sudden Destruction


Hope you enjoy them and have a great wreck week!

Wreck This Journal - Week 4

A couple of highlights for this week's wrecking.

The Paper Plane:


Thanks both to Jamie Ridler and Keri Smith to bring back this childhood game to me. I have forgotten how fun it was to fly a paper plane from room to room. For this time, I drew colorful patterns and windows onto the paper plane.

My 1st Installation Art - The Journal Cover:



I tied the paper plane to the journal and pinned several found objects on the cover to make my version of installation art. Not bad!

Cover Up Art:


When I turned to the page which marked: "Doodle over the top of this page and in the marigns", something clicked.

Wrecking is all aobut letting go and step over into the unknown. For me, this also translates to move away from the rules / instructions. So to practice this new found realization, I re-presented "doodle" as "random cover-up" of the original text. Thus created my very original cover up art. :)

The IT Bag:


The wrecking act of "find a way to wear the jouranl" had me created a one-off IT bag. I took it with me and went into the city to have lunch with one of my writing friends. And gee, you couldn't believe the stare I got from peopel! And when I met up with my friend, he asked if I had forgotten to put the book back into my bag. I told him the journal was part of the design of this latest IT bag I got from Canada. And you know what, he believed it! Or maybe he was just being polite. But who cares! I had a blast!!!

Wreck This Journal - Week 3

A Day or Almost A Day of My Life

After wrestling with STOS # 1 (rewrite) for about 3 hours, I was totally wrecked!

To re-energize, I had a wonderful afternoon tea with the Journal. The menu included lemon (wrapped by a page from the Journal) for lemon tea, cup cakes and mandarins.


A bilssful nap with the heater full on! (It's winter here ...)

Woke up with a mild headache and called in Dr Who (David Tennant) for a quick fix.

Dinner time! I had tomato, cucumber and green beans salad & fish with cream & dill sauce. I didn't use the page as napkin but spit the food on the page. Yuck! But ... you couldn't believe the laugh I had out of spitting! (Something's wrong with me!!)

Feeling a bit full after dinner, I needed some exercises to help my digestion. Pepper jumped right in (literally) to play tug of war. At the end of the game, Pepper had the Journal under his paws and the Journal was covered with his saliva.

Such violent game really tired us out. Me and Pepper headed to our warm bedroom for the night. And the Journal asked for some fresh air so there it went - sitting on a string hanging down from the crab apple tree at the backyard!

What an eventful 2/3 of my day!

Wreck This Journal - Week 2

The Journal has delivered me some problems this week. I was intructed to rip strips off the journal and to throw a page away.

Me: "What? Are you crazy? There's no way I'm going to tear a page from a journal."

The Voice: "Yes, you can!" Me: "Are you out of your mind? I've never, ever tear anything from a book or journal. This is ridiculous!"

The Voice: "Remember last week, you poured Chai Latte on a page. So how hard it is to tear it?"

Me: "Spill drinks on a page is different to throw a page away. It's like ... it's like ..."

The Voice: "It's like you're really destroying something."

Me: "Yeah, that's it. I just can't."

The Voice: "No you can!"

Me: "It's not right!"

The Voice: "Why you have to do things right? And what is right and what is wrong after all?"

Me: " ... "

The Voice: "You see, only you could decide if this is going to be right or wrong. So what if you're telling yourself that this is the rightest thing in the world to do?"

Me: " ... "

The Voice: "Come on! You can do it!"

Me: " ..."

The Voice: "I know you can. You're a brave woman!"

See below for end result.

Wreck This Journal - Week 1

As much as I’m still feeling off balance (creatively), I started the “Wreck This Journal” project.

Thanks for Jamie Ridler’s week 1 vlogging, she encouraged all participants to let go the constraints which we usually associated with keeping a journal - like the copy has to be tidy and pristine. She reminded us this journal craved to be “destroyed”.

I have to say that I like keeping my books and writing materials clean and tidy. I don’t like mess. So I felt a bit nervous when I discovered one of the tasks was to “crack the spine”. How could I crack the spine of a new book? But I remembered Jamie’s reminder. Hence I took a deep breath and did it. Amazing things followed – Burn one of the pages … easy! Spill coffee on it … piece of cake! Poke holes … no problem!

But the most enjoyable part for me is to number the pages. Instead of doing it chronically, I used random numbers and words.

This is fun and surely made this cold Saturday afternoon a lot brighter!

I’m posting some of the pages I’ve done so far, enjoy!