Pride and Prejudice journal.

I worked on this a couple of months ago but am just now getting around to sharing it. :)

Earlier this year I got Gwen Diehn's The Complete Decorated Journal, an amazing book about journaling. I read the whole thing through in a weekend and came away with so many inspiring new ideas for using more art in my journals.

But one section in particular stuck with me. It mentioned The English Patient, which is a book and I think also a movie. Apparently, there's a character who carries a copy of his favorite book, and he has basically made a journal from it. He writes in the margins and grafts his own thoughts and words in amongst those in his favorite book. I thought that was pretty much the most amazing thing ever, so I decided to do that for my next journal.

I found a B&N classics hardcover copy of Pride and Prejudice, which happens to be my favorite book (tied with Narnia, which of course is a series :). I paid a couple of dollars for it at Goodwill, and then I set about to alter it a bit.

I originally painted the cover red, but it looked pretty awful. :) So then I bought some scrapbook paper and recovered the front and back with that.

I also used scrapbook paper to cover the endpapers.

I cut out the picture that was on the dust jacket and glued it inside.

Using a book as a journal like this is interesting. It's good because you don't have the intimidation and pressure that comes with having to fill a bunch of blank pages (like in a normal journal). But it's more complicated because you have to make the pages blank in order to write on them. :)

I bought a big bottle of cheap white acrylic paint, and most of the time I just paint over the pages. Two coats covers the words enough (though they still show through a bit, seen below). I go through and paint five to ten pages at once so I don't have to do it every time I want to journal. Before I started, though, I wrote down all of my absolute favorite pages and parts from Pride and Prejudice so I would know not to paint over those pages when I get to them.

The author of the journaling book recommended removing some pages when you're altering a book. When you paint or glue on these thin pages, they wrinkle up. Plus, whenever you glue anything in, it adds extra thickness. So every so often I cut out a chunk of 3-4 pages with an Exacto knife so the pages inside don't get too thick for the covers. :)

I also added in some other pages. I cut out all but .5" of this page and attached a piece of watercolor paper inside. {I am not a painter, but I like playing around with watercolors every once in a while.}

I especially like the scrapbook paper on the back endpapers and the back cover: weird vintage ads and then old stamps.

Later, I went back and glued in a bit of ribbon as a bookmark and I glued two pieces to the inside covers to tie the book closed. I don't have pictures of that, though. It was something I meant to do while I was working on the book but forgot about.

I also made this a while back: a recipe box. I really want a nice, sturdy, wooden one eventually. But for now I can't find any good ones, or if I do, they're too expensive. So I bought one of those cheap wood recipe boxes from Michael's and Mod Podged it. I used old book pages and some fancy scrapbook paper.

It's okay and will work for now. But it didn't turn out quite like I had hoped. Also, it has several finger prints on it from where I touched the Mod Podge to see if it was dry yet. And guess what? It wasn't. :)

Until next time,