Journal Upgrade!

I am so in love with my new (old) journal!

First of all, I must certainly give credit where it's due, so this is where I found the idea to dress up my old journal. I love the journaling ideas she has, and adding fabric to a paper journal is just one of them. So here is the original journal, which was given to me by a friend on my eighteenth birthday. We won't talk about how long ago that was. Sorry for not getting a picture of the whole thing; I guess I was too eager to take out the giant spiral binding.

After taking out the spiral, I pulled out some green eyelet fabric that I'd purchased a while ago without a project in mind. I didn't want the colors on the cover to show through, so I grabbed some white fabric scraps too.

Though I knew I was going to do a post about this project, I still haven't quite gotten used to taking a picture of every step of the process. So, I forgot to capture the covering process. Basically, I used a foam brush to paint some decoupage glue onto the cover, then put on the white fabric. I wrapped the edges around to the inside of the cover and glued them down. Once the glue had dried a bit, on went more glue and the green fabric. I wrapped and glued those edges too. Next, I chose some fun scrapbooking paper and glued it to the inside covers to hide the edges of the fabric.

To put the journal back together, I pulled some pink yarn through the binding holes, then tied it off in back. It's much less bulky and I think much prettier than the big spiral.

Here's the inside, with that pretty pink yarn showing. Much more fun than boring metal.

I then sewed up some leftover burlap-style cotton fabric into a clean rectangle. This is before it's finished, but I did hem that last side too. I made sure to measure it against the journal so it wouldn't be too short or overlap.

This fabric was to hide the binding on the outside and give the whole journal a more finished look. Here, I used Aleen's Fabric Fusion to glue it on instead of decoupage glue, because it will give it a better hold.

I was just going to glue on some buttons, but I noticed some scrap fabric from a necklace I'd made previously and decided I liked the idea of a flower. I cut out some circles of the white fabric and the colorful fabric. These don't have to be perfect, and I actually like them better if they're not.

To make the petals, I folded the circle over on itself and dabbed a bit of tacky glue in the folds.

I added a few more petals, gluing them in the center.

Then I glued a cute button in the middle of the flower. Don't mind the glue; it dried clear. I was just impatient to take a picture.

I added another button at the bottom.

And there you have it! A whole new look for an old journal!