Handmade Journal gifts! DIY

Front of Flamingo Journal with pocket

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back of Flamingo Journal

 

 

 
    As a writer, I'm always keeping my notebook in my purse in case I get an idea for a story. Yes, even when I'm going to the tanning bed, my notebook comes too. You'd be surprised at how a good 20 minutes in the tanning bed can refresh your mind and allow you the ideas to come. In fact, I take a trip to the tanning bed if I've had a bad case of writer's block. I guess it's like meditating for me, but this post isn't about my adventures in the tanning bed. It's about this kick-ass handmade journal I made!

  I wanted to pretty up my own notebook, but I get so sloppy in mine when I'm writing or putting down ideas that prettying it up would be useless. Our fabulous neighbors are an older couple who we've become close with over the past several years. We go through these spells where we give each other little gifts back and forth. These spells have been known to last an entire month long! 

  Last week we found a tee-tiny baby kitten dropped in our driveway. It was pitiful, barely able to make it on it's own and not even old enough to be away from it's mother. It had a nasty eye infection and I simply could not take care of the poor thing. We had all the kids that day and the kitten couldn't stay here with my other cats--they're not nice. 

  My Lovie had the idea to take it to our lovely neighbors. They are huge animal lovers like us. I had a poodle once and they loved him. I ended up giving him to them and they've taken wonderful care of him so I knew the baby kitty would be safe there. My Lovie went up there and asked if they would help out by taking the cat in until we could find a new home for it. They kindly obliged and have already fell in love! 

  No, this post is not about kind neighbors and cats. I'm gettin' there. Just hold your horses. Since they were so kind to have taken in the kitty, I wanted to thank them. Handmade is the most thoughtful, right?

MATERIALS I USED TO MAKE IT

- 2 pieces of sturdy cardboard. I cute mine from a cardboard box because it's very sturdy. You can use simple cereal boxes, but that was too flimsy for my taste. Make the rectangles, or squares of cardboard as large as you want. I cut mine from the flaps of the cardboard box and then cut them slightly smaller.

- Scissors.

- Fabric scraps. I'm big on saving everything, not wasting so I happen to have a lot of small, fun printed fabric scraps. You can always go out and buy fabric, but the thing I love most about this project is being able to use up what I have leftover and just sitting in a box ready to be turned into something. You don't even have to use fabric. You can use decorative paper or paper you've made yourself, but I thought fabric looked nicer for this.

-Glue. I used the clear blue Elmer's kids glue and didn't get much of a hold using it so I switched to using a tube of Liquid Sitch and hot glue. Something you should know about Liquid Stitch, no matter what color fabric you use, even black, it's going to show through and give a rough appearance. Not so clean looking. I decided to just use the Liquid Stitch around the edges of the fabric on the inside, which I'll explain later. A good glue stick, like Uhu-Stick can come in handy too, but for a good hold, hot glue works best. 

-Ribbon. You can use twine or any type of ribbon you like. You can even choose to use something else to hold the pages together.

-Hole punch.

-Computer paper or stationary--whatever kind of paper you want to use to make the pages with. I chose clean computer paper.

 


HOW I DID IT 
 
  So I dug up some adorable, colorful fabric--the flamingos! Unfortunately, I did not have enough to cover both pieces of cardboard so I used some black fabric. You see the pocket I made on the very front of the journal? I actually came up with that idea because my fabric piece didn't quite cover the full front! 

  I took the pocket piece of fabric and hemmed the "L" shape so it wouldn't fray, and so it'd look clean. Then I used Liquid Stitch and some hot glue to hold down the black fabric. Afterwards, I ran an iron over the entire thing to help the glue hold better and to smooth those lumps made from hot glue. See the photo below, with the front "L" shaped pocket.

   After hemming the pocket and gluing down the black piece of fabric, I started on the other piece of flamingo fabric. You see that on the front here, there's three pieces: the L shaped piece, a square piece of the same fabric under the L shaped one and the black. 


  After using hot glue to hold the black piece down, I went ahead and folded a straight line across my square shaped flamingo fabric, that way it would have a clean cut rather than a frayed, non-straight end.  I simply folded the end down and made an easy hem by using hot glue to glue the fold.


  Then I positioned it under right under the black piece and hot glued. After that, I done the same with the L shaped pocket. This is where you need to be careful because you may accidentally glue the pocket down. It won't be a pocket then! You only need to glue the edges of  the pocket onto the other side of the cardboard, if that makes sense? This will leave that piece of fabric opened so that you can use it as a pocket for post its, receipts, pages, ect. 

 

   Above you see the ugly side of the cardboard where I glued the fabric. I glued the sides onto the other side and left the pocket open, like I mentioned. Later, I made a little change to clean up the inside of the cardboard journal covers.

  The front side of the top cover was finished. I just needed to run the iron over it to flatten out hot glue lumps and ensure a good, sturdy hold. I sat that piece aside and went to work on the back cover.

  There on the back cover I did the same thing, only I didn't make an L shaped pocket. Instead, I done a simple half black, half flamingo and left the inner portion of the flamingo fabric un-glued that way it could be used as a pocket too. I just used the same technique as I did with the L shaped pocket. Only gluing the fabric sides down onto the "ugly" side of the cardboard.

  
  The picture above shows the back cover. The flamingo fabric is the pocket. After all the fabric was glued down and holding on well, I went for the hole punching!


  I started by making holes through each cardboard piece. I skipped my hole punch because it wasn't ideal and used an X-acto blade. I sliced through in three different spots. Rather than having a large hole, the small slices are hardly noticeable.

  Then I grabbed my stack of computer paper, folded them all in half and began punching holes. 


 


  Then I began threading the ribbon through. Since I went with ribbon and small slices rather than holes, I needed to use a needle to thread the ribbon through. I actually began with a pastel pink twine like material and didn't like it so I switched to black satin ribbon. 


  I threaded one piece of ribbon through the first two holes and then made a bow to hold things in. 


  Then I threaded the other piece of ribbon through the last hole and the middle hole. If you look at the photo, I used the middle hole for both the top and the bottom ribbon. Pictures will do a better job of explaining than I do. 


  I threaded the ribbon through the pages as well. That's the purpose, to hold everything together.

  And almost done, but the inside is left ugly and it will be seen when the book is opened. Since I give my journals as gifts, I wasn't about to leave the inside so ugly when the outside was so pretty.

  A simple piece of folded computer paper will clean the look up drastically. If you really wanted to go all out, you could use fabric here too, assuming you have enough. I didn't and I used computer paper.

  
  In this picture above, you can see what I did to make the edges of the cover-up paper look really nice. I simply folded on piece in half and then folded down each edge, like you do with a fake hem. I then ironed my folds so they'd stay down well. Lastly, I broke out the glue again and went to town!  See how nice that looks, in the picture down there?

  

  You can't really see it, but I wanted to give my own personal touch by leaving a brief message in the front cover, so I used my pastel pink owl stamp and cut out a tiny piece from a flash card. I know owls are nothing like flamingos, but I never can resist using my Mr. Owl stamp on... EVERYTHING! I put him there and wrote a little "you are awesome" note to the receiver of my journal.




*So, is this something ya'll will be doing? If so, I would love for you to show off your photos to me! I adore the journal projects. I'm always using my funky fabric scraps for these or either one of my storage boxes I often gift. That reminds me, have you guys seen the photos I posted of my storage box gifts? Oh, they're so cute!