Autumn Journal

I. Love. Journals.

I love looking at them. I love buying them. I love making them. I just have a hard time filling them up.

I find her journals and her journals very inspiring, as many of you probably do too. But I think the one whom I find the most inspiring is Natalea. She just whips them out so fast and effortlessly and they are always fabulous and interesting to look at.

Natalea recently created a journal just for Autumn. I recently acquired this gorgeous bit of velvet rose, which someone had tacked to a bit of black tulle netting.

So, inspired by both Natalea and the velvet, I set out to create yet another journal.

I started with a hard back book, that I picked up from the library for a quarter. Gutted it and sliced it into two, right down the center of the spine.

I'm going to sidetrack for just a moment here and tell you a little story...
Almost exactly a year ago, I was wandering through Hobby Lobby and saw a Zutter Bind-It-All. I thought it was the coolest thing ever and bought it right then and there without even going home to get a 40% off coupon. Visions of beautiful journals danced in my head all the way home. Then a day or two later, I read on someone's blog that it was a great tool, but you just need to take it slow and do some practicing with it first to make sure you learn to line things up correctly. Frozen is what I became. Silly I know, but I wouldn't go near it after that. In fact I never even opened the box. Until yesterday. Two weeks ago, a friend demonstrated how easy it is to use. I even got to try it and she was right.

She had some scrapbooks she had done, but instead of using the wire binding, she used ribbons to tie it all together. I loved that idea, but instead of individual ribbons down the spine, I decide to lace my journal with seambinding.

At first I wasn't sure if I would be able to bind it this way, because I had to punch through the book spine plus two layers of velvet ribbon. I had a hard time getting it into the slot, but once I did, it punched without any problem.

I'm so pleased with it! Now to just fill it... we'll see how that goes.