The Finished Product!!!

My most EXCITING POST YET! 

I got my sewing machine back from the repair shop on Saturday and closed myself in my studio the entire evening. My poor husband was completely abandoned on a Saturday night, replaced by my burning desire to finish an art journal!

So I've taken a bunch of photos to show you my process with this journal. I made up all of the pages this past week while my machine was in the shop. You can look at this post to see what pages I included.

Once I sat down to sew the signatures together, I realised that I had been WAY too ambitious planning my pages. The cover that I had made last weekend  was too small by about an inch and a half on the outer edges. After a couple of chuckles at my overzealousness, I decided that I would DEFINITELY make a new cover that would be even MORE awesome than the one I made last weekend! Since making the cover was the most creative and fun part for me, I was definitely A-OK with making another one.

I used orange embroidery thread to sew my signatures together.
Since this is the colour that I use the least in my sewing,
 I thought that I would use it for this job since once the book is done,
these stitches are hardly seen. 

Definitely too many pages for the cover I made last weekend!

Back to the drawing board to create a NEW, larger cover... a SUPER fun "problem"!

Assembling the art pages was a really fun part of the project. I have stacks and stacks of neat papers that I store away for a rainy day. For this project, I took out all of my favourite papers and put them into this book. Since it's my own art day timer for ME, I figured that I might as well use my favourite papers and fabrics!

Some of my pages were stitched together to include different layers of papers. 

My Contacts section was created using a set of alphabet tabs that I trimmed down, then sewed onto trimmed cardstock using a zigzag stitch. Very cool looking and just as strong (or stronger?) than glue!

Now for the Piece de Resistance! I've made a VIDEO to show you how the finished product looks. It's about 4 minutes long, and I am so proud of myself that I actually made a video and did the voice-over. In this video I share a lot of my techniques, how I store my papers, my thought process for putting the journal together, and a general tour of all of the things I've included. 

I would LOVE to read your comments, questions and suggestions on my new art Day Timer! Thanks for looking!