My Garden Journal

My 1st project this fall was to alter a hardcover book that my friend Brandi gave me. She used hers for a cute Halloween mini album. As soon as I saw hers, I knew I had to make a garden journal. I'd been cleaning out flower gardens for awhile, and was kinda sad to see it all go away & needed to record all the hard work.

Here's the process I used, after watching a 2 hour video on UStream by Marion Smith. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13073025

Tear apart the "signatures" with an Exacto knife. Leave the paper snippets intact on the inside, as it will help adhere the new signatures to the spine.

Measure book height & width. I subtracted 1/4" for the scrapbook paper, so that the pages would fit in the altered book nicely. Fold paper in half using bone folder.

I then cut smaller papers to use for journal tags. These are also folded in half. Arrange all your papers so that none of the pattern papers are repeated, next to each other. No more than 4-5 per signature. Hold the papers together with clips, then sew down the center of each signature.

Glue (I used tape adhesive) the last page of the 1st signature, to the 1st page of the 2nd signature, etc until they are all together. Then use glue to adhere the last page to the back cover and the 1st page to the front cover.

I chose to leave the hardcover book as is, but you could paint it any color you like, before you adhere the book with scrapbook paper.

Now the real fun begins....add photos, embellishments, journal notes, etc. to your altered book!

The finished altered book! I used some garden theme paper & matching embellishments, that I bought awhile back at The Scrap Trap. It was perfect for my garden journal.

It's huge! It took a long time to make it, but I love all the memories that it's going to bring back this winter, when we're dealing with 10 feet of snow in our backyard!