Customised Journals

Hello everyone and Happy New Year,

I hope you all had a great Christmas and that 2018 will be filled with wonderful crafting ideas and creations!

For my first blog of the year I am going to talk to you about journaling - my new addiction.  As this is very new to me and I'm only learning it myself, I have started with customised journals rather than making journals from scratch as this is much easier and a great way to get into it without getting in over your head too soon.  It's the perfect way to ease yourself into making handmade journals.

As my customised journals are actually diaries, I wanted to get them done before the end of January so that the owners can get the full benefit of each month.

I used A5 sized day to page diaries with a hard cover but you can use whatever size you wish.  In order to decorate the cover as desired, it first needs to be primed for good paint adhesion.  For this I used Gesso which gives a really good base for the paint and hides any marks or writing that may exist on the cover.  Next, I used one coat of white acrylic paint on the cover once the Gesso was fully dried - depending on the original colour of your cover, two coats may be required.

The next step is choosing a colour scheme and adding your choice of paint to the journal cover before adding your embellishments.  For this I used two watered down acrylic colours and dabbed the paint on using a soft brush.

Journal Front Cover

Journal Back Cover

After the paint is dry the fun begins.  This is when you design your journal using any fancy papers, fabric, buttons, ribbons, lace, paper flowers, stamps and embellishments that you want!  Just layer them on and once you have decided what looks good just stick everything on using a hot glue gun.

You can then seal your project using some spray varnish - this will protect it and ensure the paint doesn't get chipped or damaged.

Below are some more pics of my own creations which I am very happy with.  You can also add some pockets or other additions to the inside on some of the blank pages at the front or back of the diary as per my photo below.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my customised journals and that you try it our for yourself.  I'll be posting more on this topic soon so keep tuned.

Bye for now