It's the first place I go when I step in to the store...and it's the last place I check (just in case they've put anything new out while I was shopping) before I leave.
And when I come across amazing items like these...
...I about lose mah mind.
On a recent trip I saw these lovely little journals and I bought every single one they had. Yep. I'm THAT person. I needed quick & easy teacher appreciation gifts and I just knew these would be perfect.
But before I wrapped them up and sent them along to school with the kids...I decided to dress them up just a bit.
I grabbed some of my stash supplies from Maggie Holmes and Dear Lizzy and got to work giving these babies a little makeover.
I added a few stickers a pieces of ephemera to the fronst of the journals, just to make them a little more personal...
I tried to keep them simple because I'm hoping they are taken out of and put back into purses & bags all day long...and I didn't want the embellishments to wind up stuck to the bottom of someone's bag.
The cover on the kraft/polka dot journal was really very thin...and I imagined it being ripped off easily...so I added a piece of patterned paper to the inside front cover to sturdy it up a bit.
In order to make the new paper look like it belonged there, I cut the paper to include the space beyond the binding coil, lined up the coils with my paper, marked their positions with a pencil and punched holes with the smaller setting on my Crop-A-Dile.
Next, I snipped the paper from the edge to the newly-punched hole...making sure to NOT cut past the hole.
Finally, I pushed each of the holes on the paper around each of the wires on the journal.
When that was all finished, I adhered the patterned paper to the cover so that the pieces acted as one...the cover was now much stronger and the inside front cover was much prettier.
The mint-green journals had a much stronger cover...so I didn't need to a add a piece of paper to them. BUT, I did a piece over the start of the journal paper...just because it looked so darn pretty.
I used a little glue dot to stick a flower cabochon to some mini-clothespins and then used that clothespin to attach a little tag (that the children wrote "thank you" notes on) and a Dunkin' Donuts gift card to the inside of the journal.
And just to add that little something extra, I adhered an envelope or glassine bag to the inside back cover of each journal. It's always nice to have a place to keep little notes or receipts.
And that was it!
A fun way to dress up these little notebooks...without taking away any of their natural "wow!"
Wouldn't these be great to make for your girlfriends as a "just because" gift? Inexpensive and so fun!
