Personalized Journal

A couple of days back my cousin asked me if I've ever made Journals before and if I could make one urgently for her to gift it to her friend. I was meaning to try it out journals for a while now and I jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at it. Plus I was happy that I could count it as my first official order :P (though it was from family :D )

I asked her if she had any theme in her mind and she provided me the image of the word Hope and said the rest was up to me. I started conceptualizing the cover in my head and decided I would make it colorful with some ink smooshing and also add some feathers and Angel wings as I felt it went with the theme of Hope.

So start off I gathered all my materials and decided to go with an A5 sized journal. I took some papers from a sketchbook and decided to use them as the pages for the journal.

With the dimensions of the pages ready I used my Silhouette Curio to draw the image my cousin gave onto watercolor cardstock using the pen holder feature - to use my Sakura Micron Pen.

I had never tried ink smooshing before so I practiced on some scrap piece of paper first and then once I was satisfied I tried it on the main piece. I used Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry, Broken China and a combination of Mustard Seed and Evergreen Bough Distress Inks as my four colors for the smooshing. I liked how dramatic it looked.

I felt the word Hope was getting lost in all the colors so I went in and colored it with a black Sharpie.

I used my Curio once again to cut out some feathers and angel wings and I positioned them on the panel to see which arrangement looks best. I wanted the wings on top of Hope and the feathers to be dangling from the arrows. I decided to use some silver twine to tie the feathers to the arrow - or at least give that impression. I also added some sequins of corresponding color to make it look like the colors are splashing out. I added a few other embellishments and the cover was ready.

For the back I wanted something colorful to be in line with the front and decided to do a splatter of  the same colors used in the front. I also used a typewriter font stamp to stamp out my cousin's friend's name at the bottom.

After the front and back were ready I went ahead and punched two holes on all the pages and tied them using some dark pink twine. I also swiped my ink pads on each of the sides of the journal so that all the pages have a colored border - again used each of the 4 colors used on the cover. With this my first Journal was ready!

Though it was a relatively simple one to start with I totally enjoyed the whole process of designing it and the execution of the thought process! Looking forward to making more such wonderful journals and projects.

I am also entering the journal in the following two Simon Says Stamp Challenges!

1. Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Layer it Up

2. Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Use more than One Die or Punch