Sustainable Art: Rebecca Journal

This month we are featuring Rebecca Journal and her dreamy work including her gorgeous sustainable tote bags.

What inspired you to start Rebecca Journal?

During my last year of art school, I began to daydream about owning my own small business and creating a physical product that represented me and my creative style, but it took me a whole pandemic identity through my illustrations and drawings on Instagram, so the voice and sensibilities of Rebecca Journal came to me organically, but I only began sewing in July 2020 after my mum began sewing masks for friends on her little machine. I was really excited by the idea of using the machine so I attempted a scrunchie – let’s just say it did noooot go well! But I out how to make bags. It brought me so much joy and a sense of accomplishment- a feeling which had dwindled thanks to the pandemic – so I used every moment of my day to practise and research ways to get better! The whole journey of my brand has been so natural and exciting for me so far; I love creating so much and being able to combine product making with illustration and product photography is the most fun ever.

How do you ensure sustainability in everything you create?

I knew as soon as I began sourcing materials to create mock-ups that I wanted to try as hard as I could to focus on sustainability – at university we were guesttaught by Orsola De Castro, the incredible founder of Fashion Revolution and the ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ movement. Everything she taught us about ethical production and the cruelties of fast fashion echoed in my mind as soon as I realised the heavy responsibility of making products that could create even more damage. Sustainability is a process that takes a lot of thought, detail and research but I am so happy with the decisions I’ve made so far: I use only deadstock and remnant fabric for my bags – meaning I am reusing fabrics and giving them new life – and locally produced organic cotton for the inner linings. wonderful company who use eco-friendly inks and a water-free printing and manufacturing process! My stickers and illustration prints are printed onto company using a carbon-neutral courier, and the tissue and packaging I use for orders are all made from recycled materials, using vegetable dyes and non-toxic processes. All the materials I use for my bags are free of animal products – the kraft tape I use to seal deliveries is also vegan and made from 100% recycled paper! I always buy from small businesses when I look for cute stickers for decorating my delivery boxes and try to make sure they are made of paper rather than plastic. It’s just little old me who makes my products, which means I am able to keep tabs on every detail of the business and continue to work on developing my brand’s sustainability. I have a few tweaks and changes coming to Rebecca Journal in the summer which will give my customers even more transparency and I feel so comfortable and happy with the direction my brand is heading! All the research and work I’ve put into the consciousness of my brand has been so valuable and is a constant reality check – it has changed my perspective completely towards fast-fashion brands and shown me just how important it is to shop thoughtfully and carefully, buying from small, slow and sustainable brands wherever we can.mSmall businesses are where all the most beautiful and cool products are anyway!

Where does the inspiration for your designs come from? The Sunday bag in Oat is a CTV favourite!

I love Oat too! One of the down-sides to using My inspiration for each bag comes from so many different places, but I have noticed moods and memories – like nostalgic thoughts of past summers and day-dreaming of starry evenings in Paris – are always what pull into feeling inspired. Currently all my bags are gingham, so I try to create a certain feeling through the shades I pick. Oat was made during the summer of 2020, and all I could think of was sitting in the warmth of a city with someone I love, drinking a coffee made in the coffeehouse across from where we were sat – the bustle of a city and the slowness of spending a summer’s day with a friend. Matcha is an ode to fresh, zesty summer memories, where all the colours of the world seem so bright and beautiful and Cocoa is the warmth of the familiar and being snuggly, an ode to cosiness! I love to mix classic feelings with a sense of city-life, romantic and whimsical but also new and fresh! I’m not sure if I quite meet all the briefs I give myself but I love to think of my bags in that way.

What has been your favourite thing you have created so far?

moment and it was s-u-c-h a long process trying to imagined for so long! It was a design I had been slowly working on for absolutely months and the response to it was so lovely and encouraging.

Your mood-boards are like a Sunday nap dream, why do you moodboard? And what advice would you give to someone who wants to start making mood-boards?

Oh my goodness, thank you! That is the nicest thing to say! I really love to mood-board, whether it’s gathering lovely images on Pinterest or Tumblr, creating a digital collage or physically cutting out clippings from magazines and publications. It really is such a wonderful and inspiring way to create thoughts and fresh ideas. I feel like surrounding your thoughts with all the things you love, images that you are drawn to without hesitation and curating them in a way that excites you can only lead to nice ideas – or at least give you some creative happy feelings in your brain! I used to be completely obsessed photographs or collages or cool editorial images to dive into and soak up felt like creating a whole new world for myself, and mood-boarding is so easily done! There is an app called Paper which allows you to mood-board digitally on your iPad – I saw Polly Vadasz, founder of Sighh Studio, rave about it on Insta and I downloaded it in a millisecond!

You often work with other small businesses whether it is for illustrating or just for shouting each other out, what does community mean to you as a small business?

both for your brand growth and for your own psychological growth! Instagram can sometimes be a kinda rubbish place and comparison is an easy way to get super down and existential on a Monday morning, but Instagram also gifts you the most lovely and encouraging connections who truly only want the best for you and your endeavours! I think the mutual understanding of how hard it is to create and develop a small creative business is what initially ties you, and a mutual appreciation for one another’s work. But you begin to get to really know and love the people within your little online bubble and get so excited when they do well! It’s so incredibly motivating to see your friends working hard and launching exciting, sparkly new products, it is as though you can all remind each other that yes, even on the hardest days, success is so possible! It’s important to have friends in the same boat as you to talk to when things feel overwhelming, or for advice by a supplier situation. closed-club for creatives – ran by Hannah, founder of The Delicate Rébellion – to develop and strengthen businesses and skill-sets with work-shops and lectures by some incredibly talented souls, belonging pining for the most sincere encouragement and wise pondering over, do consider joining! I have met so many kind fellow small biz owners and learnt SO much through the workshops. It’s just the happiest place and I already know I’ll be joining again next year.

Have you ever had moments when you doubted your own art, if so how did you overcome this?

Only once or twice... every hour of the day! I am quite a doubtful person when it comes to my own capabilities but I think accepting that truly every single creative has these moments on the regular is how to get through the worries. Understanding that you will have slumps and allowing yourself to rest and have moments to distance yourself from your practice can be a really insightful and helpful thing, Creativity is at its best when you are wellrested and full of focus and inspiration – if you are burnt out and stressed, you won’t create good work. It can be hard to rest when you have a deadline, so instead note that you feel doubtful and remember your perception of your work is probably pretty off right now because you’re most likely tired or very stressed from the world and its strangeness. In a month – maybe even tomorrow after some sleep and food – you will probably look at the work you feel doubtful of and think it’s perfectly good! A lot of different factors can inform how we feel about our practise and ourselves and because creativity is so you are never ever alone in feeling that way, and the feeling is not permanent. If you feel down, talk to someone who

will understand and they will remind you of all your achievements and lovely qualities.

Is there anything right now you want to continue the voice on?

I’d like to use this as a moment to remember Sarah Everard; Breonna Taylor; the six Asian American woman who were killed in Atlanta; Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, the womxn who have experienced assault in all its horrible forms; my friends who have used their voice to protect me in scary moments; my friends who have used their voice to open up wounds and tell the world what happened to them, to tell the world ‘no more’; the mothers who must sit their daughters down to explain how pepper-spray works, what apps they need to download to be located quickly should they be taken or grabbed or hurt, always keep your drink in your hand, make sure you let me know when you get home; the mothers who have had their babies taken from them.

This month’s issue is all about health, so what little things do you do to improve your health?

2020 was certainly a hard year for every single one of us, but strangely in a lot of ways having to leave my retail job and being with only myself and my thoughts for the longest time was something I am grateful for, because I learnt to build a relationship with myself that I had no time to focus on beforehand. I have learnt to really listen to what my own body needs, to realise we are all so different and all have such different needs! For me personally, moving my body is so helpful for me and mind as well as my relationship with myself. I try to make sure I move my body most days, whether it be by taking the time to stretch my body and breathe, going for a walk in the (albeit rare) sunshine as it begins to set and grow golden – stopping to take a photo of every single cherry-blossom tree I come across, jumping around and going red in the face during a HIIT workout and slowly feeling myself grow stronger, learning a dance to a new K-pop song I’ve become obsessed with, walking slowly with someone I love on a Saturday afternoon, going swimming (hopefully again soon!) with my mum but spending most of the time laughing and talking to her at the end of the lane. I am learning to shift my thoughts from ‘I need to exercise so I lose weight’ to ‘I want to move my body because it makes me happy and helps me feel

They can have a lil’ peek at my Instagram or visit my website.

Interview by Kirsty Taylor