New Journal, I show you how I'm decorating it.

Hello everyone, welcome back, today I show you a new Journal, this one also made with digital papers, not only with coffee dyed and tea dyed paper and with scrap papers, I'm having so much fun, paper collection is wonderful, and  it's the first junk where I use a fabric cover. These papers have colors that I adore.

It's complicated for me to create covers with paper, worse with fabric, because I never find and I couldn't even find any fabric patterns that could work for this. About a year ago from an online fabric shop I bought some cream-white fabric just to make covers and paint them myself, and I think I'll buy more of this fabric because I intend to make a creation for my room, but let's go back to the cover of the Journal. Why a fabric cover? I had created some covers some time ago, naturally none were right either in terms of color or size, as I wanted to give more space between one binding and another. Do you remember that mini junk journal you saw in a few posts/videos ago? I finished it in January, and it has become so chunky that it doesn't close anymore, my mistake, I put too many sheets, little space between the bindings and if you add to this the various embellishments inside... it is logical that it becomes so full to "explode", that's why I wanted to leave about 1.2 cm between one binding and another and I'm not saying that it bursts already but it's nice and full, 1.5 cm would probably have been better. In the video that I will add at the end of the post, I show the journal that I started on 12.02.2023 which I don't say in the video but on the last page I marked the start date, so as to see how long it will take me to finish it.

As you can see is already chunky and you can see bindings too, I want to show back cover also that in video I forgot to show you.

I used 2 different stencils to make the cover, one bought from Aliexpress a few years ago and one I honestly don't remember if I bought it from Lidl or from Opitec. But I find them cute and I must say that I really like this cover.

The cover I was saying is made of white-cream canvas, inside yellow and brown little flower fabric and I added felt between the two layers. Naturally, I first created the cover with fabric paint and then sewed it all together. I show you the colors for fabric, I would like to buy some "distress" spray colors, sooner or later I will buy them. I show you these from Marabu.

The ones in the photo above are only 3 and they are in spray, here in this photo fabric markers, in the past I bought a couple from Opitec if I remember correctly, and in this box are 10 and for now I have only made some writing for the journal, but I want to try to draw something, the problem is that they have a thick tip and on the fabric it gets even thicker, I'll do some tests that I'll share soon.

On the spine of the Journal I added an eyelet to which I hung a tassel  to embellish it, you know that creations you make before and than you wait for the right project to be decorated with that embellishment. I used mother of pearl, acrylic pearls and golden pearls.

To close the Journal I added, then sewed by hand a band of fabric aged with tea and a metal key.

Here at right you can see I wrote "journal" and I sewed it on a scrap of pink fabric with little hearts, application and the green lace you see, I paited them with the spray colors too.  the cover I colored these too. I would like to try to make other experiments with other types of colors, natural ones though (I'm a very little chemist 😁). If I get something of nice I will share with you in next posts

As I mentioned just now, leaving a little more space between one binding and another would perhaps have given me the opportunity to add many more embellishments than those I have already added and will add again, because I am far from finishing this very colorful Journal. 

You see fabric between two bindings, that's the space I showed before from outside. I love these colors. As I said in the video, I saw them in one of Gayle Agostinelli's videos, as soon as I saw them, the next morning I bought them from Etsy, the seller is called Joey Cardmaker, his collections are really beautiful.

Probably in next videos I will show embellishments made especially for this Journal.

In this Journal, in addition to the digital papers, I have added many papers aged with tea, coffee, turmeric and colored tissue paper, color craft  cardboard with  foil is from a 180g/m A4 paper block, it's a my aunt's gift, she bought it from Micros (Switzerland).

 Here I show you only some of the first pages, to see the rest I'll leave you with the video, and I'll definitely make another video once it's finished.

This is my 11th juournal, and out of 11 I only finished 2. Then I don't go in order following the pages but I turn around and where I find the page that inspires me at that moment I decorate. I still have to finish the one with the autumn-themed animals and the one with phrases, quotes and songs...

with colour tissue paper

coffee, tea and chestnut dyed

turmeric dyed 

These are the colors of the cards obtained with tissue paper, the first was not immersed in water but only splattered, in the Journal I used many sheets where you can see the small colored drops, in the photo it's difficult to see well, but I got the pink from red, even if the color of the water is very dark the obtained color is always very light (talking about tissue paper), the same thing for blue and green and purple, but I love these pastel colours.

About turmeric dyed I used last sheet in this journal, so I have to try again to make others turmeric dyed paper, anyway yellow in photo seems clearer than how it is in real.

I think that's all for the moment, in next post I hope to show you some experiments I'm thinking to try, 2 days ago I made one but I failed, I will try again and I will tell you soon. Stay tuned.

Happy crafting, see you very soon. Love. Betty