Update - New Journal is ALMOST DONE!!!

Alright, so I've been going CRAZY working on pages for my new journal.

A list of my pages to include:
- week at a glance
- grocery list and meal-planning
- actions list
- project planning guide
- daily activity record
- daily BBT record/graph (for baby-making!)
- calendars for 2012-2013-2014
- pockets to stuff cards and notes
- art journal pages
- inspiring quotes including one that I had my mother write out so that I would have it in her hand-writing!
- contacts a-z
- a page for my contact information and useful phone numbers (services, emergency numbers, doctors, etc.)

A lot of stuff, right? Well I didn't realise how much stuff I actually wanted in there until I went with all of my pages back to my journal cover. Yep. WAY too much stuff. In fact, my journal would be over twice as thick if I included all of the pages that I want. Of course I want to have a journal that I can use day in and day out, but to what end, right? Do I really want to carry around a suitcase just so that I can bring my journal with me everywhere?

My solution? include everything, but pare down the quantity of each section. For example, I had about 75 week-at-a-glance pages printed out. This takes up over half of my journal once they're folded in half to make the 5.5"x8.5" size that I want. I also went from 20 sheets (40 pages) of project planning, activity, action list and grocery list sheets down to 10. I figure that once they're folded in half, I will still have 20 sheets double-sided, which is a total of forty pages for each of these things. Definitely enough, right?

The cool thing about paring down the size of my journal is that I have almost enough pages for a SECOND journal! This means that I can be working on numero dos while I'm working IN numero uno! Love it! :)

I am DEFINITELY going to show you the different pages that I've put into this journal in a future post because I've customized ALL of them to suit my own needs and I'm pretty darn proud of them. Stay tuned!

Oh wait! The reason why I wanted to talk to you in the FIRST place is to tell you that in the midst of all this creativity making my new journal, my SEWING MACHINE BROKE DOWN!!!! How inconvenient! I'm going to drop it off today at a local repair shop with the hopes of getting it back tomorrow (fingers crossed!)

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!