Set of Butterfly Garden Journals Done

It took me about a week and a half to get the whole set done. I made four similar themed journals named "Butterfly Garden Journals". I made all my trials and mistakes on the first one which I'm going to keep. Here are some more pages of the suede journal.

They all have three signatures, hand sewing and machine stitching throughout. They are all fabric and lined, have natural polished hemp ties with beads. They also all have a few hand painted pages with garden scenes at the bottom of the pages that have pop out flowers. I've also included a few hand painted cards into each journal. I finished those pages after I took these pictures. The flip through of all the finished pages will eventually be on a YouTube link at the bottom of this page.

I did not realize the amount of work that goes into each of these. They are half decorated, meaning that the design is carried throughout the journal but many pages are accented but left blank for you to fill in with your own stuff like pictures, cards and writings. I have also included a half sheet of butterflies/moths that can be cut out and used in the journals.

There are many little pockets to stick things into. Some of the washi tape is removable so you can either swap it out or glue it in permanently if you choose. Sometimes the machine did skip a stitch but it's not meant to be perfect so that kind of thing just adds to the beauty of a handmade item.

The page backgrounds turned out so pretty. I have held on to a few large wall stamps that I've had for probably 10 to 15 years or longer. I kept moving them from one storage box to another, never having used them but I held onto them anyway because you never know. Well I finally got to use them on these pages.

The stamps are huge. There's a butterfly, a dragonfly and a big fern leaf. I'm glad I kept them because I've cleaned out my supplies several times over the years and given away a lot new and slightly used craft stuff. But I never could part with these for some reason. Now I finally have a use for them!

There's a quick flip through that shows all the pages: Sorry about the quality, I'm having issues with the lighting.

Butterfly Garden Journals

A few of the finished pages in my set of journals. I am so proud of these so far but I've got a long ways to go before they are all finished. It takes so much time to hand paint flowers on some pages and cut out all those dang butterflies! I really need to take the time and digitize these cutouts and let my Cricut machine do all the cutting work on them to save my hands.

Not really going in chronological order here but this is the first signature page. Some of my papers are taken from old gardening books and I tried to use them to my advantage when I designed the signatures. I also took care to put a pop up flower in each signature. It's just something that I wanted. Every page including this one has been coffee dyed and sprayed with watercolor glimmer mists to give them a special effect.

This is another page in the first signature. I used washi tape throughout the book because I really love it. On many but not all of the pages I've ghost stamped butterfly wings and/or plant leaves on the backgrounds. On this right page I've sewn in a folded pocket made out of half a paper doily and backed with scrapbook paper.

I've used black and white butterflies (and moths) throughout the book for contrast because the pages are so rich and colorful. I like the clean bohemian shabby look but not too much vintage and antiqued stuff. I think too much antiquing just looks dirty. That's just a personal preference.

While I was working on some of the pages I just absolutely fell in love with them and they make me smile every time I open the book. Now that's what a journal is suppose to do!

My First Bound Fabric Art Journal

I've been working on a set of four of these type journals and I am not quite done with them yet but I am at a point where I can stop and take a good look at them. The first one is always a prototype where I make my choices and mistakes until I decide how I want to do them all. So I will always keep the first one of each themed set that I make.

These are modified traveler's journals. Not the standard traveler's size but they are soft side wrap around fabric journals. The pages are 4-1/2" x 6-3/4" and there are three signatures to each book. The covers are made of faux suede, leather, ostrich and heavy upholstery material. Oh I learned so much making these. I am not finished with them yet. You can see I got the first stitches a little crookedy but that's O.K. I'm keeping it.

What took so long was designing them and deciding what to put into them. And for everything I did like in mine, I had to make three more similar or of the same type for the other journals. This is what it looks like all folded up.

I was moving right along after sewing in all the signatures in all the books. Then I wanted a certain bead for the closure. I had to stop and go to the craft store and I found what I liked but when I got home they would not fit on the natural polished hemp that I used so I had to ream all the wooden beads out with a tiny drill - by hand. WHEW!

Seems like it took forever to drill them out... then, I decided I wanted a heavier bead for the other string. So that also took me a while. I had to drag out my polymer clay and molds, bake the clay and let it cool, paint it and when it was dry I put it on the closure strings.

It feels like it took me forever to get the one book to this stage when I've really only been working on it solid for a little over a week now, most of the time was drying time. I had planned out parts of it in my head for several weeks before I even started.

Then, I had to write down each step so the other books would have all the things in them too that I liked. So many steps! I got to use all my craft supplies on these! Stamping, embossing, rivets, sewing fabrics, fibers, spraying, polymer clay charms, painting, decoupage, washi tape.

But I think it was worth it. This is my favorite page so far. I'm not trying to produce finished journal pages here, just a start for a place to stash memories and bright dabs of color. Personally, I don't write in a journal but I do like to decorate and create artwork so I added little touches to the pages like hand painted flowers (to be shown later) and pop up primroses.

I am in love with these books. It would be very, very hard to part with them if I wasn't keeping one for my very own. Can't wait to show some pretty pages when I get time to take more pictures.

Adding Flowers to The Pages

Ugh... this is going so slow... every time I get a good idea or see something new I want to put in my book, it takes me a day or two to perfect it. I've got a real garden/floral theme going in these journals.

Like these pop-up flowers. I've seen quite a few of them in the past few days so I did some research and got some free tutorials to see what everyone else is doing and how they're doing it. And that leads to me making my own. Which takes forever to get the colors and sizes right - even after I design them in the Gimp. I haven't done a radial gradient for a while so it took some time to relearn how to do it.

Then I couldn't get the colors just right in the program so I had to drag out my old pan pastels that I used to make flowers with and then get the sizes just right for my smallish journals.

There's nothing I love more than opening a book and having a huge flower pop out at me but it just didn't look right in these journals so I had to downsize them by about a fourth to get what I wanted.

I do love them though. They look like primroses to me and more important, they go with the feel of the booklets. I made an editable graphic file in my favorite colored layers so I can just mix any two colors and adjust the transparency to get literally any color in dark and light that I want and just print them out in three different sizes. Markers for the details and pastels for the edges and boom! I got a unique little bunch of flowers on the page when you open it up.

I worked on them all day for 2 solid days and I think it was worth it but I'll never get these journals done if I stop that long for each little piece I want to put in them. I just love these little flowers. I think I'll put them in all my books if I have the time.  :)

So Stinkin' Cute

When I first saw these, I just thought they were so stinking cute I had to make some. I got the prints on etsy. They are about 1-1/4" x 1-3/4" in size.

These can be made into pendants or attached to a journal like a charm. In fact, they are little journals with some blank paper so you could actually write in them if you wanted to.

Right now I'm working on some flower themed journals with butterflies and birds but I already know my next journals will be about bees so I've already started planning those too. I have several papers, tags and some transparencies already printed out for them. I will be using real beeswax in them somewhere, maybe on some tags or envelopes.

And then floating around in my head are some drawings and paintings of some houses and gardens. I've already gathered some architectural pages from a book I got at the thrift store. I just learned how to paint miniature florals and garden flowers with a sponge... I didn't know why at the time but I'm glad I did!

Even though I grow violets year round, I miss my garden so much in the winter. Making pretty journals and painting flowers helps until Spring gets here.

I just fell in love with these little books. Aren't they so cute?

Journal Making

I've been wanting to make some journals for a while but I just couldn't decide how I wanted to make them. I decided to start by gathering papers from old books, writing papers, music prints, printing out newsprints etc. on my computer and I even have some pretty papers and gift wrap I can use. So that's where I started. I put them in little signature stacks to be sewn into a cover.

And I went on YouTube to see what everybody else was doing so I could figure out how I want to do mine. I knew I wanted to use up my stash of scrapbooking papers since I have a massive collection of papers I love to use for projects. I also knew I wanted to do some sewing on my pages and use some of my massive collection of charms on them too. But I needed some fresh ideas.

I did run across some really good journal ideas out there and decided to do a soft cover. I have all kinds of fancy fabrics and faux leathers, fur, etc. I was going to make some doll clothes out of them but got on to other projects. Now I need to find a way to use them.

So I've been taking all the best ideas I can find and am starting to work next on the cover. That's the biggest decision for me. I love textured paper and I love faux leather. Hmmm... I'll have to decide soon.

A Little Background

THE FIRST POST on a new blog

Well it's a new year and time for a new blog. I have so many hobbies - what's one more. Actually, it's not a new hobby for me. I made a few dozen of these little books several years ago and just didn't have a blog to put them on that was relevant to making little books. These are made of strips of paper accordian folded and glued to embellished dominoes. I just added ribbon under the inside edges on each side to tie closed. I binge made about 3 dozen of these in just a few days.

When I was a kid I used to make little books out of plain paper and do the writing and the drawing for them. I've hung out a lot in my life in libraries so books have always been a big part of my makeup in life and art. Now I'm learning different ways to make them. No rules.

My other blogs have pretty much run their course but I'll leave them up and who knows, maybe I'll get back into making dollhouses, growing violets full time (I still have about sixty or so) and/or greeting card making some day again.

I started out in paper crafts making and trading ATCs years ago and I have a huge collection of them I'd like to find a use for besides sitting in folders collecting dust. Maybe I'll make an ATC book... something to think about.

One thing I've learned - there are no rules to bookbinding. And making them from scratch makes you a booksmith.