A Great Craft for Kids or Adults! Make a Journal!

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     Fancy journals that make you want to crack them open and write your inner most thoughts can be pricey.  If you are a prolific writer of journals, crafting your own journal might be a fun option.  
     My creative  granddaughter is always on board when it comes to doing a new craft or activity.  I had been toying with the idea of creating journals using inexpensive composition books for awhile and when I mentioned the idea to Jayda, she was all in! 

     January is a perfect time of year to begin a fresh journal.  Here is a list of the supplies that we used to get you started on your own personalized journal. Of course, you don't need all of these supplies.  I merely raided my craft supplies and found things for us to use.  You might find other things that you would like to use:

• Composition books-I bought ours at Walmart for .97 each.
• Scrapbook paper-Most of us have some already!
• Cricut-I used my ancient one to cut out words and/or decorative shapes for our journals.
• Adhesive vinyl-for cutting the letters
• Ribbon
• Decorative brads
• Mod Podge
• Sponge Brush
• computer printer
• yarn
• buttons 
• Washi Tape
• Stickers

     We made a little video of Jayda explaining how to decorate the journals.  She started by tracing the shape of the cover of the journal onto the back of the scrapbook paper and then begins to explain  for there. 

     You can make your journal as elaborate as you would like.  Here are others that Jayda made: 

Jayda used yarn to make a closure for the journal. You could use elastic or ribbon as well. She also used ribbon to cover the binding.

She also used decorative brads in the corners of her cover to decorate the front and to help hold her ribbon trim in place. To bind the journal with the bee theme, adhesive vinyl was used. Before adding the binding, we put a ribbon to use as a bookmark.

Journaling and motivational stickers can be used to decorate the inside of the journal.

Jayda decided to make a journal for her dad. Instead of using the Cricut to make words, she found some quotes that she liked online and simply printed them from the computer and Mod Podged them to the journal.

     We have written other posts about the joys of journaling in the past!  You can check them out with these links:

• 24 Journaling Prompts for Everyday
• 6 Habits that will Upgrade Your Life
  

​And, don't miss one of Jayda's other how-to videos!

• Jayda Bakes Brookies​​