Monday, September 10, 2012

Embellished journals

Ever since the Etsy Craft Party, I've been thinking of different ways to use embellished journals. The one I made at the party is lovely, but I don't know if or when I will ever use it. That was the only real drawback to putting Ben's photos on the cover. They aren't very recent, and I was thinking that a current journal should have more up-to-date photos.

And then it hit me! I could embellish the two notebooks I will be using with my classes this year. We keep a daily notebook with all of our practice exercises, writing experiments and class notes in a composition notebook. I always save my class notebook from year to year to help me remember what went well and what needed tweaking, but lately they are all starting to pile up and blur together. I think I might need to purge my closet and toss out some of the really old ones.

I really liked the DCWV Timeless Type paper stack that we used at the Craft Party, so I went looking for it at my local Michael's. I like the stack because the pages are much more varied than I was expecting, and I especially liked the polaroid page. The motifs are a little dark for my taste, but still, I thought it was appropriate for a writing class. I also found a second DCWV stack called The Garden Tea Party, and I decided to splurge on both even though I knew I would only use a few pages from each.

I pulled two or three pages from each stack and looked at different layering options. I wanted to repeat some of the techniques from my first embellished journal experiment, especially varying the edges to give the cover some added dimension.

I used a beautiful page for my Garden Tea Party journal. I especially love the illustrations and the texture. Something about the paper seems so light and airy and fresh. I wanted to show as much of the main page as possible. I was debating using flags for the titles, but I wanted to be sure the lettering would stay on because that journal has to last all year.

I wish I could say there was more advanced technique involved, but I used Mod Podge (I think I'm a little addicted) to place the main page, the flags, and then to seal everything together. I found an interesting idea on pinterest for embellished clipboards (I currently have five in my classroom, and all of them are being used!) as gifts, and I'm thinking this is a good use for those rolls of handmade paper I have gathering dust in my closet. I'm always so afraid to cut into the paper because it's so lovely on it's own. This seems like a good way to preserve the paper and put it to good use at the same time.