instructions
The following instructions are open to interpretation. You will need a journal and whatever tools you can come up with. Carry the journal with you at all times for best results. This list will grow over time.
- 1. spill your coffee.
2. scribble wildly.
3. poke holes in page using a pencil.
4. paint it black.
5. scrape it along the ground.
6. tear out a page and do a one minute sculpture.
7. glue something slightly unwieldy into your journal (something to bulk it up).
8. place journal open on the floor. drop media onto it from waist height.
9. tear page into tiny little pieces. glue in envelope to put them in.
10. use page as a napkin while eating.
11. cut through several pages.
12. drag a page through the mud.
13. cover a page with circles.
14. make the most subtle marks possible.
15. using a sharp object make scratches.
16. cover a page with white things
17. Cut the page into little strips and roll them into balls - Steve L. from Brooklyn NY
18. Make a sudden unpredictable movement with your journal.
19. Ask a friend to do something destructive to the journal. Don’t watch.
20. Eat some colorful candy. Lick the page.
21. Rip a page out. Make as much noise as you can.
22. squish fresh fruit between pages like pressed flowers. -Caroline
23. tape freshly cut locks of hair to it. -Alison A.
24. place journal face down on the grass and stamp on it with your feet, preferably in a public park, jump up and down until you feel really really good. -Miss Dot
25. Open the journal and run things over it. (toys, car, etc.) -Susan D.
26. Drip/paint with nail polish. -Talya
27. Wreck a page while in the midst of another activity. (i.e. reading, doing the dishes, having a conversation.
submit your own instruction in the comments below and it will be added to this list.
I found this through your flickr page and have been doing this. I am usually pretty unbridled in my journals but this is opening things up even more. I am having great fun and have posted a few pages to the flickr group.
Thanks for the inspiration, as always.
Many blessings, dear Keri.
[...] the instructions to get some ideas of what to do. feel free to interpret them any way you like. come up with your [...]
Loving this!
Rock on Keri!
Liberating. Loving it!
(the form doesn’t have a submit button that I can see :-))
place journal face down on the grass and stamp on it with your feet, preferably in a public park, jump up and down until you feel really really good and your inner child has had a workout.
Open your journal and allow your kids to run over it with their bikes, little jeeps, skates, whatever…better yet, get in your vehicle and run it over.=0) so cool!
tape freshly cut locks of hair to it.
squish fresh fruit between pages like pressed flowers. so gushy and satisfying.
Drip/paint with nail polish
Open it up and take a nap on it. Drool drool drool!
Find a stapler. cover one page with the staples left in the stapler.
Write something really, really important–all of your deepest, darkest thoughts–then take an x-acto knife to the page and carve out half of the words.
take your dog for a walk in the wet woods and let her sit on your journal when she gets back
hide a secret.
Leave your journal open, out in the rain.
Leave it under a blossoming tree for an entire day.
remember paper weaving from elementary school? tear one page from your journal and cut into thin strips (weft). with another page, cut thin slits (for a warp) into it. weave the thin strips into the page with the slits.
Tape a journal page to a brick wall and throw tennis balls at…just like a “wrecking” ball.
I cant figure out how to use the submit thing up there so here is my contribution: After your done drinking tea, take the teabag and squish, drag and smash it around on one of the pages. Fun!
the form wasn’t working, so i pitched it.
rethinking submission process.
k.
Put out your cigarette on the page. Squash the butt between the covers. Heck, burn the page.
Let your dog eat his dinner from the page.
Make your baby a bib from a journal page. Feed your baby. Put the page back in the journal.
Ask people to spit out their gum into your journal.
Put on lots of lipstick. Kiss your journal.
Selectively set parts of it on fire. Try using rubbing alcohol but be freaking careful!
Ask everyone you see during the course of a day to add anything to one page. This includes the counter clerk at the quick stop. See how full you can get the page.
Glue, tape or otherwise affix lint from the pockets of all of your clothes to a page.
Hand a sharpie and one of your pages over to a four-year old. Then trace the lines with glue and glitter.
Incorporate dried or fresh aromatic herbs into your journal.
Cut out a page, bury it for a week in your most fertile soil, then dig it up and stick it back in (as if it never left!).
or turn a page into a self addressed envelope and post it to yourself.
my dad used to always call instructions “destructions” so this is quite fitting for me really.
tape up a page (or the whole journal) on a wall and throw fruit at it. apples splatter nicely, but anything thats juicy and will stain is good too.
when out drinking ask strangers to write something in your journal.
paint a small pet’s feet with a nontoxic paint and get them to walk on your journal.
Put your journal through the washing machine.
I always refer to instructions as suggestions, so here goes …
- Have your favorite pen explode in your bag next to your journal.
- “Accidentally” leave your journal out on your front lawn all night long (oh yeah, don’t forget about the automatic sprinklers).
- Use your gold pen to make an original cover for your journal, only to have it blob all over your cover instead.
Cheers!
Have a small kid (under the age of 3) scribble whatever on that page.
-Spill orange juice and tomato juice on the pages.
-Stick pages together with your favorite chewing gum
-Tear a newspaper and staple the parts in your diary.
-Make a rainbow from cheap red, blue and yellow hairgel and splash
it everywhere.
-Create art with tea and cappuccino
- randomness with hole punch and stapler
- pleating pages
- fruit sticker page
- pan scrub your page
- wire brush your page
- peel veg over your page/leave journal in compost bucket overnight
- leave journal open on door mat
Squash a big bug between two pages. Leave it there.
open it up and snap it under your windshield wiper (if it’s small enough to not obstruct your vision!) and drive around on a summer night “catching bugs”
swipe some glue on the page, sweep the floor and sprinkle the contents onto the page
Write “Dear (insert your name),” with your opposite hand.
Look at it. See what strikes you. Then, continuing to use your opposite hand, write a very short letter to yourself. But be kind.
next time you get a papercut, use your finger as a stamp!
also, this one seems obvious, but i didn’t see it…did i miss it? rip open half-developed polaroids and press them to the page
Write on the page “Welcome, please step on me.” and use your journal as a welcome mat at work.
Doodle on the page in absolute darkness.
put it in the dryer with some wet towels.
pull out one page and wash it with your next load of towels. Put it back.
toss the whole journal in the washer if you’re feeling very brave.
squish soggy fruit loops on a page.
make a sampler page with dirt, grass or chocolate
pin it to a dartboard and toss some darts at it
crumple up every single page in the book then smooth them out again
Immerse the book in black tea for a few hours
draw with your eyes shut…….
draw the person opposite you ยด( whether on a train or in a cafe) but draw under the table - without looking at the page!
draw with your ‘wrong’ hand.
fill a page with finger paintings i.e no brushes - lovely and messy :0)
fill a page with expressions on faces
fill a page with interpretations of words - i.e. spotty, sharp, soft etc etc
collage a page of words from junk mail’
tear patterns into a page and stick back in again
Lightly sprinkle water on the page, then iron the wet page. Repeat as much as you like!
Use things you might normally throw away, like the border pieces from a sheet of self adhesive stamps, trimmings from the laminator, etc.
Peel the crusties from glue, mod podge, etc and make art in your journal.
Use “too much.”
shalom v’ahava,
Menachem
Bite your journal. chew up a corner. or 4.
Draw and write whatever you feel like in your journal whilst very very angry/sad/annoyed
then draw a pretty picture and paste it over the bad words :}
Drip candle wax onto it.
when something or someone frustrates you, write or draw it on a piece of heavy, non-toxic paper and chew it up. Don’t swallow it (for obvious reasons)!
with your morning “made up” face, take a page and wipe it all over your face!
thats it-do it with the same motion you use to wash your face.
allow time to dry- may want to spray it with a layer of hair spray to keep it from smearing, and, or disappearing,
write, scribble, whatever- every negative thought or thing you say about your face.
then HAVE FUN CROSSNG THEM OUT,- PAINTING OVER THEM, -USE A HOLE PUNCHER AND PUNCH THEM OFF THE PAPER—-anything you can think of to get rid of them-do it!
Pollen season is coming! Smear a page with Elmers glue, and prop open the book (with rocks or bricks) under a tree or in a flower bed on a breezy high pollen count day. Repeat on another day later in spring when the early flowers start to lose their petals.
MAKE LEAF PRINTS WITH MUD.
MAKE CIRCLES ON CIRCLES ON THE PAGE WITH COLOURED MARKERS.FILL THE PAGE.
PUT SHOE PRINTS ON IT WITH MUD, WITH SLUSH, WITH DUST.
tear out a page, burn it, save the ashes and paint something out of it with your fingers on a new page of your journal.
Write a secret then white out the names…
stick tape to the pages, then peel it back off.
embrace childhood art techniques:
Make butterfly prints (different color blobs of paint on one side of the page, fold in half, press together and open to reveal a butterfly!)Experiment with the different patterns you can make by pushing the paint around in different directions when the page is still folded.
Color a page with different colored crayons then paint over in black paint. Once dry, scratch through the paint to reveal the colors underneath.
Add food coloring to bubble mixture and blow bubbles so they land on the page.
FIll a dish with the liquid and blow into it with a straw- press the page aganist the dish to capture a print of the bubbles….
Use a hole punch to print out lots of little circles from a page, then stick the circles to the adjacent page. (interesting effect, I’ve found.)
another idea! (i have lots of them) Take a file or sandpaper to a few pages, then draw animals on them with your eyes closed. (extension: draw the animals with your “wrong hand”)
another idea! (i have lots of them) Take a file or sandpaper to a few pages, then draw animals on them with your eyes closed. (extension: draw the animals with your “wrong hand”)
Yeah! i like wrecking journals!
yes, i have more! this one’s better, though. Bit more original.
well, it’s really good if you stick loads of bits of magazines, ads, newspaper cuttings, etc. on to a page, then take the stanley knife to it. You get all sorts of odd words cropping up. Now write them all down, read through and see the randomness of everything.
Nice site, a few suggestions of my own…
-Next time you cook a Pizza, put a page between the pan and the pizza base, and stick it back in once it’s done.
-Put a page inside the vacuum part of a Dyson (or any other hoover) for a week or so, and stick back in.
-Use it as a coaster for a multitude of coloured drinks (tea, coffee, beer, alcopops, etc), and be particularly messy with the drinks.
-Next time you are printing a photo / something important, stick one page to an A4 sheet of paper, and see the results.
-Get a page dirty, and put it through the laundry with the rest of your clothes.
-Send out random pages to strangers (”sell” a page on eBay, use the phonebook, or beg on your blog/website for help), and get them to desecrate it, and mail it back.
A question to those taking part: Are you actually writing in said journal? Or just defiling the pages?!
scribble & draw with crayons..like red over self-deflating words…turn a page or two and iron over it.
Rip out a page, address it to yourself, stamp it and mail it. Or mail the entire book.
stick the journal in the back of a leaky car trunk.
let water leak onto it
do not rescue it
after a few weeks retrieve the journal
note the variety of ruined pages… swollen, stained, rippled, moldy, etc
My ex husband once ruined my Bible this way… accidentally he says.
Store some smells in your journal. Vile smells work the best for creative purposes.
But other fragrances bring back memories.
Use ‘rubbing’ technique (something smelly or fragrant -> rub a paege against it)
give a page to a small child and tell them to draw you a picture
Bring the journal in with you when you take a shower or tape a page to the shower door/curtain.
Didn’t have time to read all entries….don’t know if this is there, Tape or glue dead bugs to the page, or make little seethrough boxes to encapsulate them. Also good for cigarette butts, etc.
Pin pages together with straight pins, safety pins.
draw your worst monsters on the page (big, colorful, stick monsters will do), get bleach pen and draw giant X’s on them. voila! “burnt” them to death! mwahahaha!
(heehee. i am really not that violent in real life.)
Glue piece of carbon paper, carbon side up, to journal page. Flip page over and doodle to leave image on following page. Then take some strips of wide Scotch tape, lift up carbon with them and apply to some other journal pages.
Take your journal with you the next time you get your hair colored.
Have them smear the remaining left over dye on your pages. Go around to the other hair stylists and have them smear their left over dyes in there as well. Maybe a few squirts of hair products and some shampoo. Dry it with a hair dryer. A little trim around the edges. Beautiful!
Dip your cat’s paws in acrylic paint and have him/her walk across the page. Maybe even try your parakeet’s feet in coordinating colors.
I am off on a vacation for a few weeks. I had to close these comments temporarily due to comment spam. I will reopen them when I return.
happy wrecking!
k.