Dream Big!

I've been bad about not posting anything, but I swear I've been busy working on some fun stuff.

My colleague, Laura, wants to surprise her sister with a special journal for her 40th birthday.  I'd never been asked to make a journal, but I figured it couldn't be much different than a typical handmade scrapbook....just a lot of empty pages for actual journaling.

I scanned the web for some sample layout options that would be easy to replicate (we have a short turn around), so that I could complete it before Laura went out of state to celebrate.  I found a couple of options and Laura picked the one she liked the best.  She then gave me a color scheme to work with....shades of green (her sister's eyes are green) with lavender.

I was super happy to find a beautiful paper by K & Company....soooo pretty...for this "Dream It" journal.

Here is what the cover looks like:

See that pretty stitching?  I did that ALL by hand!  Good lord...I really need to figure out how to use my actual sewing machine for projects like these.  It looks perfectly spaced doesn't it?  That's because it is!  I used a wonderful stitching guide by the Stamping UP folks (my friend Elisa let me use hers).  I'm totally purchasing one for me :)

I haven't yet invested in a Cricut machine as I haven't been able to justify the expense.  However, I am sooo glad I purchased the cuttlebug years ago.  It allows me to cut out letters in fun fonts to make whatever titles needed.  This is a retro/bubbly font (I'll need to figure out the name for you all) that seemed to be perfect for what it needed to say.   You can image these letters are really thin...which I why I also the creation of the Xyron machine.

Mine is pink and not purple.

The ability to cut out these cute letters and then convert them into stickers for easy placement saves me oodles of time.  In the past, I used to painstakingly use a glue pen or a toothpick to add adhesive to thin letters like these.  Ah, the beauty of tools.  I used the mini Xyron for these letters, but I now also own the medium xyron for bigger projects - yay!

Oh!  My other favorite tool is the Gypsy Binderie!

It's an electric hole puncher for my scrapbooking projects.  This allowed me to use scrapbook quality paper for the inside of the journal.  I saved a ton of time using this machine to punch holes in the cover and the 100 pages that went inside.  I just wish it had a guide for helping you make more than just two hole per page for larger projects so that it could be a bit sturdier.  However, two works..this project isn't too large.

I own a Zutter machine for spiral binding, but I couldn't find spirals that would be large enough for an album this thick at any local store.  I also couldn't even begin to imagine cutting each sheet of the inside so that the it had all the slots necessary for the spiral binding.  That would have taken at least an hour to cut alone!

Anyway, the journal isn't done yet.  I'm going to add some inspirational quotes and pics to the inside.  I'm excited to start that portion of the album. 

I can already tell that is going to be a very special gift for Laura's sister.