A New Journal is in the Works!

Yesterday, as I was dying my hair flamingo pink, I decided to do some sewing on a new art journal/daytimer. Inspired by iHanna's blog post from earlier this year, I began planning out how I wanted it to look.

I started by determining the size of planner that I wanted. I used some templates from DIY Planner to decide that I wanted a standard 8.5" x 5.5" journal. That's the same as a standard sheet of paper folded in half. I figured that I could include templates of pages and my own creative pages more easily if they were all a standard size. More on the pages themselves later.

For the cover, I got two pieces of heavy cardstock (heavier than a cereal box but not as heavy as corrugated cardboard) that measured just OVER 8.5" x 5.5". I figured that I wanted the cover to be slightly larger than the pages so that the pages themselves would be protected. That's what a cover is for, right?

My Monkey and I went to a yard sale yesterday and I picked up a scarf featureing "Flowers of Barbados" in vibrant colours and beautiful images. This is what I used for the front cover. For the back cover, I went into my fabric storage wardrobe and picked out a nice blue striped bolt. I sewed these to the carboard with my machine, then sewed them to each other, leaving a space in the middle for the book's spine. So in the end, I had a piece of fabric that was made up of two bits of fabric sewn together with two pieces of cardstock at the ends. Here is what it looked like from the back:



You can see by the stitching that I had already embellished the front at this point,
but you can get the general idea, I hope!

After sewing the basic form, I then had a TON of fun embellishing the covers with ribbon, motifs and felt. I must say, my sewing machine was going at full speed for a good hour or so! It was super fun trying out different stitches and using different coloured thread.

Here is what the good side of my journal cover looks like now:



Pretty awesome, right? I think so too! I used a piece of felt to make the circle on the back and just sewed it on with a minty green zigzag stitch. I also went through my remnatns and scraps and found some cool designs like the swirly flowers on the top left. The heart is also done in felt and outlined with a zigzag stitch, and the bottom right wavy thing is where I played around with my machine's different stitches.

Here are a couple of close-ups:




See the cute leaf stitch at the bottom of the felt? Neat!





I *love* the light blue ribbon with the roses...



So NOW I have a front cover and back cover for my journal. All I need to do this week is get my pages together into signatures. Hopefully next weekend I can stitch it all together into a solid binding!



Front Cover



Back Cover





 How did the hair turn out, you ask? Wait 'til later this week for some before, during and after photos!