Journal time!

I have always loved notebooks and journals. I don't personally manage to maintain a journal, but just owning them makes me happy. :-) I used to make journals for sale, up through last Christmas, but although I still have a bunch left, I probably will continue to make them! For the He Has Shown image, from Micah 6:8, I embossed in gold. The journal is, as mine always are, covered with wallpaper. By using wallpaper and mitered corners, the journal can be easily wiped clean, and the corners do not get mashed like they would with paper.

Thursday already!

Wow, how did a week go by so quickly???

That's what happens when one is hyper-focused on something! Our town has it's annual "week-before-the-balloon-rally parade Saturday, and then the Balloon Rally itself next Saturday, and I'm busily putting together as many journals as possible. I am almost exclusively just making very basic wallpaper journals ... wallpaper is lovely because you can clean it, the mitered corners stay nicer much longer than cardstock, and best of all, the wallpaper is free!

I went through my previously made journals for some inspiration for the few decorated journals I want to have. This one is one of my favorites. It's a little too time consuming to recreate, but perhaps I can simplify it a little....hmmm....

Journals!

I'm not sure why I bother posting such simple journals, but perhaps it will inspire someone to create their own! Even if without a bind-it-all, wallpaper is great stuff to cover any notebook with. It's easy to work with, and protects the covers from "stuff" that can get on them when placed carelessly on a table or wherever. :-)

I am getting ready to order paper from a local printshop. I'm not sure it's worth the expense, but I have them use 24 wt. paper which is thicker than copy paper, and means the writing doesn't show through on the other side, which I really like.

LOL!

I love, love, love this smARTworks set! I was asked a month ago to make a small journal for a baby gift. This is the mother's fourth child, and the children are all very close in age. The oldest of my four children had just turned four years old a month before my last child was born, and I remember the utter exhaustion of it all. I figured this momma needed a reminder to laugh! Being pressed for time, and remembering this card (above) that I had made a couple of months ago - and as usual, I had created a couple of extras of the main images - I created the journal cover from the same design.

Cat Journal

I was asked by a local couple to design a journal for them, one that included cats, and the colors pink and blue. I knew I had just the stamp for them!

A last minute journal idea

At the Houghton craft fair, two young women were looking for cooking-related stamps. That got me thinking ... I have a drawer full recipes given to me, copied by me, printed from the computer, etc. While my mom made each of us children a three-ring binder full of recipes, the index cards, magazine pages, etc, aren't easily added. I decided to create a cookbook journal as a last minute gift for the craft store. I would use cardstock so that pictures could be inserted - perhaps of young children or friends making recipes, or somebody's blue ribbon pie at the fair, etc. I also thought the sturdiness of cardstock would work well for attaching recipe cards and other loose recipes. And since hand-written recipes sometimes contain errors, or need notes of explanation, or one desires to just alter them, I included a space to keep a pen right in the journal. I made the covers an extra half in long to accomodate. I also used 1.25 inch wide coils so that it could hold a lot of added recipes.

It was purchased within a week, so I was glad I'd made it! My youngest daughter was impressed with the idea enough that she is now typing up my loose recipes so that I can make one for us!

:-)

Mini Journals

These are the smallest books I made for the craft fair; they measure slightly less than 3" square! All sizes of my journals sold well, but especially these. I started out with nine, and when I had sold most of those, a college professor stopped by, wondering if I would make more for her Sunday School class ... by the weekend. With Houghton being 45 minutes away, it would not have been worth it for me to drive them there, so I made them that night, before the second day of the craft fair. They don't take that long to make, but finding the right wallpaper pattern that would have a small enough design, and be enjoyed by a young girl or teen, took quite awhile. I didn't finish until 3:00 a.m.! (And that's why the second picture was taken in artificial light - I knew I'd never have time in the morning before I left!)

Medium & small journals

Hmmm... discovering I have several missing journal pics. Oh well, I didn't decorate any of them, so it's not really important. I made a couple of 5x7 journals, a couple 4x6 journals, and about a half dozen 4x4 jounals. The top one here is a 5x7, the others are 4x4.

"Standard" size journals

These are two simple 8.5 x 5.5 (page size) journals that I made. I love finding wallpaper that looks wonderful without any embellishing!

large journals

I made several large journals (8.5x8.75) for the Houghton College craft fair. In the craziness of preparation for it (with having the opportunity of two stores just happening this August, there was no way I could start preparing for the craft fair early!), I didn't photograph all of them, including one which I actually did some stamping/designing. These two are just covered with wallpaper, no stamping or embellishing, etc. The rose one was made out of the most gorgeous wallpaper, the picture does not do it justice. It was purchased by a college student to use for her wedding book!

It is Well remake

I made an identical journal to this over two years ago for a stamp challenge. It just might be my favorite journal. A friend requested that I make one for her, and with a need for journals for the Houghton College craft fair in December, I made two. The only difference with this one here is that the background is wallpaper (I always use that now), and I had a sort of face silhouette on the "Christ hath regarded my helpless estate" oval. It was definitely a feminine face, and as I though this journal would be good for a male as well, I omitted the image on the one I made for the craft fair. My friend's journal was purple, but a shade that my camera decided was gray. :-)

I was inspired all over again by this hymn as I re-created the journal. The pictures are from the actual tragedies of the author's life: the Chicago fire in which he lost his businesses, and the ship collision that cost the lives of his daughters. If you don't know the story, google the name Horatio Spafford.

Music journal

Here is the journal that I made with the music panels. I love making music-themed cards and journals. Not only do I love music, but their are just so many related symbols for stamping!

The music notes were cuttled, and the white on black sheet music was done with white on white embossing.

With all my lined journals, I used 24 weight paper instead of the standard 20 wt. copy paper; it makes for much crisper lines. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a printer that will give me a two-sided, double page layout that will have back and front matching, so I have to have the paper done at a printshop. This makes the price more expensive than I'd like, but for now, it's the way I need to do it. I make mostly cardstock filled journals now.

I forgot to photograph the journal cover before assembling, so my apologies for the poor quality of the photo. In order to preserve the cover, I punch a no-flap bag from clearbags.com along wo\with the cover before assembling. It's easy enough to remove when the journal is full.

"Waste not, want not!"

I really try to be a good steward of my resources, so when I gave the local printshop some cardstock to cut for some 8.5" square journal pages, it left 2.5" strips. I had some cut into two inch squares. This gave me two cute sizes for books. I thought the size here would be cute for child, perhaps to draw little comic strips in, or as a list book for adults. It was fun to make!

Excuse the poor quality of the photo. It looked fine on the camera, but I should have downloaded it first. The album is not here now, so I probably won't retake it. I definitely need a good photo editing program, that would have made a difference in appearance!

"Genuine" Scrapbook pages

I thought I'd show a sample of my "scrapbook" pages. On the left are a couple of scraps; I really did use a bunch of scraps ... I keep drawers of partially used pieces of cardstock. But of course, I added a lot, especially in the efforts to have most "pages" full size. When I paired up two (occasionally three) scraps, I used post-it notes or tape to keep them together when punching the holes. :-)

Genuine Scrap book ... as simple as it gets!

Here is the second "genuine" scrap book. As I said in yesterday's post, I could not get the computer to work properly (still haven't). The printer worked fine with the last computer, but this one can't seem to "agree" with the computer over color. Running a sizzix through cuttlebug is a nuisance, and the sizzix dies shed all over the place as well, so I didn't want to just copy the first journal. I finally just pulled together the flowers and brads, and decided I really liked the simple look! I played around with a few embellishments, but this just looked so sweet and simple, I decided I would quit trying to "fix" it!

Genuine "scrap" book

So odd, I thought I had posted this yesterday, I even can remember how I described the scrap book ... but the post is not in drafts, hmmm... this morning I spent 20 minutes seeking the description I'd used for the blog and altered slightly to print out for the journal itself, and couldn't find that either. ???

Anyway, this is a I'm calling this a "Genuine Scrap Book”. That is, it really is created with cardstock scraps! I put interesting cuts and strips in (wide enough to be useful, and to be sure the bind-it-all punched at least a couple of holes so those scraps wouldn't just hang out), and plenty of full sized pages with some borders and punched outs. It was more time-consuming than I expected it to be, but I liked the concept enough to try a second one, which I'll post tomorrow. I had major frustration with our new computer: the colors do not work properly. It's so weird. I finally gave up and used the sizzix alphabet dies instead!

Quickie Notebook cover

A couple of weeks ago there was a request on the navyformoms website to send packages to corpsmen on a hospital-type ship where moral was low. I was given the name of a female corpsman. It was a lot of fun filling up her box. I decided to cover this little notebook, intending just to find some nice wallpaper for both covers. It was, after all, a small notebook, with cheap perforated paper, not meant for something to journal in or keep. But, I got carried away, lol! I hope she enjoys it!

Simple gift: wallpaper journal

I did not have time before the last craft fair to design any journals, so I decided to just to use wallpaper, and label them "use as is, or embellish with ...." I made ten all together, though I forgot to photograph them before selling, so I don't have all of them.

As you can see, I have a problem with the "wood" look: I evidently did not spread the glue evenly, so even though I weight the covers down heavily overnight, proper glueing matters!!!

I wish the spacecraft journal had photographed better; the wallpaper is simply amazing!

If you've never used wallpaper before, try going to your local wallpaper store; chances are they have retired wallpaper catalogues needing a good home! The wallpaper works great for mitered corners, and unlike paper, can be cleaned.

EDIT: I generally use PVA glue, which is meant for bookbinding. However, I do recall that I accidently used my Aleene's tacky glue for a couple of journals. It's possible that that was part of the problem with my wood-look journal. However, I know I did several journals before realizing my error, and only one other journal has a minor bit of wrinkling.

Fruit of the spirit journal

Vellum is always tricky to work with: not every ink will adhere to it, and some inks will spread a bit, making for a blurred image. Embossing looks great, but often warps the vellum. I weight it down after embossing for a day or two before trying to attach it if it has warped. I usually don't have a problem, but I once had a couple of cards I had to remove from the store ... I called them "botulism cards" because of the bubbling the vellum caused, warping the cardstock on top of it.

The wallpaper background made the choice of scripture obvious. :-) The fruit on the purple border is gold embossed on gold. It looks much nicer than the photo showed.

let your spirit dance

Now we're no longer living life in color, but we're dancing! :-) I had fun doing this journal ... I don't know what it is about black and white, but it seemed right.. I originally was going to do a music theme, since that lends itself well to black and white, but decided that was too "predictable"!