I think this one has the prettiest pop up flower of them all. It was made from leftover flowers from the other pop-ups but WOW! It is not a left over.
The fourth and last in the series. This cover is made of faux ostrich fabric. The pages are not shown in chronological order as they appear in the journal. The pages shown are just a sampling of the over 80 pages in this journal.
I really love the tooled leather look of this journal cover. What pulled these pages together was the use of the leaf stamp in the background of the papers throughout the book. This is the third one of the series of four.
These are pictures from the third journal in this series:
All the journals in this set are similar in design. The pages are slightly different because many of them are a one of a kind. The paintings are similar too.
This is a beautiful fabric with a lot of texture. All the journals are lined with the same material and have the same number of pages.
I've also used the same decorative washi tape and background treatments throughout the books.
Popup flowers are my trademark. I love them and use them in most all my books. In fact, I don't think I've seen them in journals before but I really like them. They add some 3D to the flat pages.
There is plenty of space for writing and several pockets for cards decorative tuck spaces too. The graphics in all books are from an illustrated garden book.
I'm using the same binding method with all these books. A wrap around closure with a decorative handmade bead.
I'm already knee deep into the next set of journals. I have the papers dried and all the graphics printed out and cut for the pages. I also have some very pretty pop up flowers done for them. They are huge! Bees, bees, bees! That's the theme for the next set. You can almost taste the honey!
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.
