Floral Wrapped Journal

Earlier in the year, I saw the beautiful Wrapped Journal by Eileen Hull when it was showcased at CHA. I've been stalking around online waiting for someone to finally have it available for sale.  Luckily, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw our local scrapbook store say they had it in stock!!  I hustled across town to pick up the die and thankfully I got the last one they had available!! So of course, I was anxious to get that opened and finally make one of these beautiful journals.

I've been hoarding my roll of faux leather paper for a good project and this is the perfect medium for this journal.  I cut it with my BigShot and it literally cut like butter!  If you haven't used one of these dies, you are missing out.

My next step was to distress the leather.  I ran it through my washing machine with my regular laundry a couple times.  After it was dried, I would wad it up and do my best to make it as wrinkled as possible.  The good thing with this material, the more you wash it the more it resembles leather.  Once it was dried and to my liking, I distressed the top with picked raspberry Distress Ink.  That had to dry overnight.

Once it was ready to be handled without my hands turning pink, it was ready for leather strip for closing the journal attached.  I used the same leather paper for the strip - soaked/dried it numerous times to give it a better leather look.  I sewed a 1/8" stitch around the whole cover.

Now time to add some beautiful floral stamps from Pink & Main.  I used black Memento Ink and my Tim Holtz Stamp Platform to stamp the outer cover and inside cover.  Here's a little peak =)

Again, it had to dry overnight so the ink wouldn't smear or ruin any other part of the journal.  The next day, I added a button for the leather strap to wrap around for closure and the beautiful metal ribbon slider with an inspirational message.  It's attached with 2 matching brads.  Once all the outer details were added, I added my fabric lining on the inside.  I used some heat 'n bond to adhere it to the leather and also repeated the stitching around the edges.

My signatures are mini composition notebooks that were taken apart and restitched with pink embroidery floss.  Each one has a beautiful floral cover from a DCWV stack.  I then used pink leather cording to attach them in the journal.

To finish the journal, I cut the word "imagine" from the leather paper. I then painted it with bubblegum dylusions paint.  It was adhered to the cover with heat 'n bond.  My journal is now complete.  

I absolutely LOVE this beautiful journal and it will hold up wonderfully in my purse on my travels.  And I already have 2 more cut 😃

Thanks for stopping by!