Coming to Town - Wendy's Christmas Journal

Christmas Journal

Hello Everyone, hoping you are all getting into the Christmas Spirit. 

After watching and helping (slightly) Sammy, my grandson, create and make his Christmas projects for Aunty Vera this month; I just couldn't help myself and could no longer stay in the background and NOT make something from this month's items from Aunty Vera.

So, there was a little of the gorgeous papers left from Echo Park's A Cozy Christmas Collection and I just had to make myself a personal junk journal out of it....and also score another point for "Santa"...lol lol !

I wanted a simple put together journal so I used a rather large yellow envelope that I purchased at a 'cheapo' / discount store near where I live. The envelope size is 13 inches by 9 inches. I measured out the center and marked a half an inch either side which gave me an inch spine for my journal.

I appologise for not taking any progress photos as this project was a very spur of the moment project but there are quite a few of photos of the finished pages.

Once I had folded the envelope with the inch spine, I covered the outside with a sheet of the A Cozy Christmas paper that had the stockings on it. It is so festive and made a wonderful outside cover. As the patterned paper is only 12 inch by 12 inches, I centered it on the envelope and glued it down. Then used a complimentary plain piece of paper to cover the front and back edges to hide the rest of the yellow envelope.

I used my sewing machine to zig-zag around the edge of the cover. When I placed the front edge piece on, I left the inside edge unglued so I have a lovely little pocket right on the front of the cover. Here I can place a large tag when I finally decide on what kind...lol...

I collected a range of my papers and put together two signatures each containing twelve pages each. The papers include, coffee dyed papers, graph papers, tracing papers, old book pages, and music sheet pages. I placed them randomly together into a signature.

I wanted to reinforce the spine, so I used an inch wide by 9 inch strip of the Graphic 45 Chipboard sheets I had left over from my previous projects.

I glued a strip of calico over the spine strip and then hand stitched both the signatures onto the spine covered in calico before I then glued the spine in to the cover.

I then covered the front and back inside covers with more of the Echo park A Cosy Christmas Collection and then I had fun decorating the pages with the wonderful ephemera and cut outs included in the collection.

Back of cover

Below are pictures of the decorated pages in the journal...

Front inside cover

Back inside cover

Decorated pages in the journal

I made some tags and journaling cards to place in the pockets and tuck spots throughout the journal

As a finishing touch on the front cover I cut three of the two inch by two inch images from the paper colection and put some Dimensional magic on them and then glued them on the side strip.

You can see a full flip through of the finished journal below:

So, this is my very last post of my first exciting year of  being on the Aunty Vera Scrap and Craft Creative Team for 2019. I want to thank Aunty Vera and also the other girls on the team: Donna, Gina, Silvia, Tina and Amira for making me feel so very welcome and comfortable throught the year and I look forward to creating some wonderful projects in 2020.

You all have a safe and Merry Christmas

 and a very Happy New Year 

Wendy xox