Abby Tubbs, PC'17, shows us how to make our own journals! You can change the design to make it your own!!!
Things you’ll need for making the journal:
· Hot glue gun (!!)
· An old book
· Watercolor paper (or any stiff paper)
· Some fabric (really can be any color just needs to be about 2 -2 1/2inches wide)
· Acrylic paints if you want to add a little something to make it unique!
· Scissors
· Needle & strong thread
-First step in making the journal is to find an old hardcover book. It can be any size, just adjust the paper to fit whatever size you choose! My local library has these old reader’s digest books with the printed covers for 25 cents, so I use those.
-After you find which book you are going to use, you have remove the covers from the book. There is an indention next to the spine on each cover. This is a great place to cut each cover away from the book. Once this step is done, your book should look like the photo to the right.
-Once this step is done, you can actually add your own binding in. This is where the watercolor paper comes in (or any kind of stiff paper). For binding the book I just hot glue a 1 ½ -2 inch sliver of the paper to the inside of both covers. It should look like these pics!
-Once the covers are bound together, you can start working on the pages. For the pages, I would use mixed media paper. It is a little thicker than printer paper, so it’s ideal for when you have to thread the pages together. This part is a little tricky, so I usually have to watch a Youtube video to get the hang of it at first! The link to the video I watch is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O4kFTOEh6k
-I highly recommend this video if you are interested in binding your journal like mine! I group mine into 5 folded sheets of paper (so 10 pages in the book).
-The picture underneath is what mine looked like after I completed this step! It is definitely the most time consuming part of this process, so I recommend setting aside about an hour to do this step.
-So the next couple of steps are optional, just if you have the materials and the time to do it! For the spine of the journals, I like to embroider a sliver of fabric to hot glue, just to make the spine look completely finished.
-So if you like to embroider, I put a picture below of what I did to go on the spine.
Once you get this piece done, you can hot glue it on the spine and all the way to the inside of the book. If you don’t want to embroider, I would just hot glue a normal strip of fabric onto the spine.
-After this, just hot glue the spine of your pages into the spine of your book. Then your journal is done! You can also add a little painting on the front of your journal to make it unique!
