Small Journal

The new June kit from Alpha Stamps is here, and it features the Butterfly Garden 6x6 paper pad. It's perfect for spring, even though we seemed to have jumped right on into summer where I live. In any case, I decided to take the Wide Letter Box Book provided and make a sort of junk journal. Here's the cover. Don't you just love that bee? It's actually a pendant, but I think it looks great as a charm.

It was fun to mix and match the papers from the 6x6 pad to make the inside and outside of the cover. I altered the Box Book a bit by cutting the spine down by half, as I wanted a bit of a smaller journal. Leaving the spine its full size would make quite a chunky book. My binding rings are only 3/4", so a little trimming was necessary.

The pages of the book were bound with a Zutter BindItAll. After the wire bindings were done, I threaded a couple of rubber bands through the wires and slid them onto the spine. If I ever want to change the contents of the interior, it'll be easy to remove this insert.

Below, you can see how the rubber bands hold the wire binding.

Along with the Butterfly Garden paper (cut to size), the pages consist of tickets, tags, old book pages, graph paper, and even a photograph or two. Here are some tickets from past travels: one from Japan, and one from Italy. It's fun to have different sizes bound together.

An old page with German text on the left, and an envelope made with the scrapbook pages on the right. I popped an artist trading coin into the envelope.

To make the cover, I cut the spine to a size that would work with the 3/4" wire binding I used, and then attached the cardboard pieces with masking tape, which I later painted black. To make sure the tape would hold, I used some strong double stick tape at all the edges. Here's a photo from the beginning of construction. The shiny red is the liner of the tape. You can see where I put the masking tape on the spine, ready to attach the larger cover piece on the right. Make sure to keep a space between your cardboard pieces so your book has enough give to be able to close correctly.

Here are a few more pages, with tickets, pockets, tags, and lovely ladies in Easter bonnets.

For a list of supplies from Alpha Stamps, click here!