A Birthday Journal - With Karyn!

Hi Scrapping Clearly Lovelies!!! 

It's Karyn here and today I have a different kind of project to share with you made with lots of products from Scrapping Clearly. It is a handmade birthday journal made to fit inside the Heidi Swapp journal covers. 
This is quite a long post with lots of photos (nearly 30) so you might like to make yourself a cuppa and take your time :)

I was inspired to make this journal by the gorgeous new Heidi Swapp minc collection journal covers available at Scrapping Clearly. I have a gold cover - you can never have too much bling!! I decided to make my own journal to go inside the cover - filled with photos from Jessica's 8th birthday at the zoo.

I started by selecting the main papers and embellishments I wanted to use for the journal. I chose a selection of papers from the Pebbles "Spring Fling" paper collection and the Heidi Swapp Minc "Gratitude" kit.  

I cut the paper into a number of sizes 10"x7" for the cover, then 9 3/4" x 6", and 9 3/4" x 3 1/4", a file folder from the gratitude kit, a large paper doilie and a card from the Gratitude kit. You can add more or less pages as you prefer in your journal. I like to add a selection of sizes and shapes.   

At this point I used my Minc to add foil to all of the elements in the Gratitude kit. I used 2 colours of foil - mint and light pink, and did roughly half of each colour. 

Next I used my sewing machine to join the papers together. Just go slow and use a long stitch!

Here it is - looking pretty already.

Then it was time to decorate. I like to have all my photos ready and a limited range of embellishments and papers. I go through page at a time and then lastly go over again and add paperclips, ribbon, enamel dots etc.

Here is the finished journal - starting with the cover.

A project like this could take weeks to make if you fuss over each page. I've used a clean and simple approach to keep the project achievable. Limiting your supplies really helps. 

I love the tags in the Gratitude kit, they have beautiful sayings and are lovely and sparkly in real life. 

For Jessica's birthday we had a "Lemur encounter" at the Adelaide zoo - such a special experience.

Doilies and ribbons are great embellishments for these projects.

One of the sheets of Pebbles papers had lots of elements that could be cut our and included on pages - I like these papers in collections!

I love the finished journal with the different sized pages in it. it allows you to see a peek of what is underneath and gives more of a layering look.

Journals like these never have too many paperclips or ribbons!

 

This photo is one of my favourites - I cant believe we were so close to these beautiful animals! 

 

Gold alphas and accent stickers always work well with any page - they just are hard to photograph. 

I've used up lots of scraps of ribbon on my pages. 

My handsome honey! 

This Pebbles paper collection is so sweet and versatile. I love all the kraft pages and patterns. 

 

There were some diecut words in the Gratitude kit, I've used "moment" here. I did try and spray another one with ColorShine but the paper is too thin and it didnt hold up.  

You can see some of the lovely foiling in this photo. The beauty of the kits is that you can add whatever colour foil you prefer. 

Strips of papers work really well on pages. I like to use all the barcode strips on the bottom of the pages. 

Here it is all finished.  

Now it is finished It is time to put it in the cover. Isn't it pretty. 

I'm so happy with how it turned out. A special keepsake for Jessica 

 Scrapping Clearly products I've used include

Heidi Swapp minc collection gold journal cover 
Heidi Swapp minc reactive foil - mint Heidi Swapp minc reactive foil - light pink 
Heidi Swapp Minc variety pack "gratitude"   
Pebbles "Spring Fling" paper collection 
Pebbles "Spring Fling" stickers 
Pebbles gold accent stickers
Pink Paislee "C'est la Vie" paper clips

I print my photos on an Epson XP-600 printer. 

Thanks so much for stopping by

Crafty Hugs xx
Karyn