Some of you may know that I have suddenly become addicted to Pinterest and blogging and reading blogs. My cousin-in-law Cassandre shares my addiction and may or may not have been completely responsible for the Pinterest aspect. She is also the one who shared the wonders of The Pintester. I clicked the link, read, laughed my arse off and now, in it’s 3rd installment, I am participating in The Pintester Movement. What the frack is that? Well, you can read about it here: http://pintester.com/category/pintester-movement/.
Browsing Pinterest, looking for some idea of what I might want to test out for the movement, I came across this Pin:
http://judywise.blogspot.com/2007/11/more-stuff.html.
I loved it instantly and looking over the tutorial, I felt very confident I could do this one with success. (Completely missing the point, no doubt.) I set about gathering up my supplies, which seemed to grow the more I worked on the project. Which is my own fault for not following directions to a T and taking my own initiative. Isn’t initiative illegal these days? I digress.
The supplies you will need to make this journal the way I made it, are as follows:
- 4 paper bagsTutorials are rather boring, don’t judge me too harshly if you start yawning.
- Scissors
- Iron that steams or sprays and if not, a spray bottle of water
- Fat Quarter of fabric
- Spray adhesive
- Frozen pizza box
- Decorative craft paper in complimentary colors to your Fat Quarter, or not, what do I care if you color coordinate?
- Ruler or measuring device
- Small pin nail
- Hammer
- Needle
- Waxed thread (I used embroidery thread, but waxed would just be easier to work with.)
The first thing you do is acquire your paper bags. Which for me, entailed going to the grocery store and asking for some. Which isn’t the point of this journal, as it was intended to recycle your old, used paper bags. I didn’t have any, because Mike used them as kindling for the BBQ. Whoops.
Next, dismantle the bags and cut off the strips with glue on them. Then measure your bag and cut them into three or four pieces, depending on the size you wish your journal to be. I cut my bags in thirds and my journal ended up being 9”x11”.
Fill a bucket or your kitchen sink with water and dunk each piece in, gently manhandling each one to get them wet, then squeeze out the water and hang up to dry. I let mine hang over night, but a few hours would have them completely dry.
Once dry, iron each piece to make it lay relatively flat. You will need water for this. My iron steams and spray water, so this task went, um, smoothly*.
*No brown paper bags were “harmed” in the production of this book… we swears.
After ironing, I folded the papers in half and made my final measurements and cuts. (Measure once, cut twice… swear three times.)
It was at this point in the game, that I decided I wanted a
Now it was time to go to the interwebs and learn how to do a Coptic Stitch. You Tube is our friend in all things and gave me this video to teach me how. I strongly recommend watching the entire video before starting your binding, or you will be cursing and pulling it out for a redo, as I did. Twice. It’s not that it’s difficult, because it really easy, it’s just very fiddly. And I don’t get along very well with fiddly. Fuddly, maybe, but not fiddly. I don’t like that guy. Where was I? Oh yes, the binding. I used embroidery thread, which works just fine and if you can’t lay your hands on the waxed thread, it’s cool. But if you can find waxed thread, use it. You’ll thank me.
Before I could start sewing my book together, I had to make evenly spaced holes in all the things and make sure they lined up. To do this, I got out my handy dandy ruler and a scrap piece of pizza box and made a template. I did 4 sections of 3 holes each. Marked the template and used the template to mark my covers and the papers. I then took a small pin nail and a hammer to pound the holes. This took awhile, but I assure you, it was good.
This is the original:
This is mine:
Waddaya think? Nifty huh?
Success! And pretty.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteYours is a lot cuter than the original...just saying. How long did it take you take make this
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I worked on it across two days, but really it only would take a days time if you started in the morning. This would depend on drying time for the paper.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading!
Wow, I think yours is even prettier than the original! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I am pretty proud of it myself. It was the first time I had done a craft of that nature before. It was kinda fun...and fiddly. But fun.
ReplyDelete=)
Very cool! I love when pins work out like planned.
ReplyDeleteI did a recipe for my pin-test, check it out!
Thank you! I will check yours out. Funny enough, I did a Pin recipe on Sunday that turned out awful! Leave it me to to fail at a Pin AFTER submitting to the Movement. lol
ReplyDeleteYour journal is prettier for sure!
ReplyDeleteThank you! *big smile*
DeleteYup, you win the prize for outdoing the original pin! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteThank you! It wasn't my goal to out do it, I just know myself. I figured if I didn't put a hard cover on it, it would get destroyed.
DeleteOoooooh, I love journals and yours turned out so well! You should be majorly proud--a definite WIN.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I am just a *little bit* proud of it. Cause normally, I fail. Today's post, if I can get it up, will reflect that. lol
DeleteThat looks so good! I actually also tried to make a recycled cardboard and paper journal but I was super lame and used the end of my scissors to poke the holes for my binding! They were the ugliest slash marks, I like your idea to use a hammer and nail.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteI have done a little bit of card making in the past and used hammers for grommets and rivets in the paper, so I just pulled from that to figure out that a pin nail would probably do the job. I didn't want the holes very big. Next time, I will make the holes in my cover, further in. But other than that, it works well!
Success! It looks fantastic, and much cuter than the original =) Congrats!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I picked cute fabric, which my friend Stephanie gave me. That's probably why it's cute. I mean other wise, it would be a pizza box for a cover! lol
DeleteThat turned out super cute!!
ReplyDeleteUsing the pizza box and fabric for the cover was genius. Yours is way better than the original.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! =)
ReplyDeleteI am still getting through all the pintester movement folks...but I loved this! it turned out so so so cute. Are you keeping or giving as a gift? Mommyinsports.com
ReplyDelete