Christmas Journal

Every year around this time Dawn Sokol does an art journal that's Christmas themed--and every year I read her posts and think "I'd love to do that."  So this year when the folks at Retro Cafe asked if I wanted to make some Christmas themed art I decided it was a perfect oppertunity to make a Christmas art journal.

I started with a small used book.

Then I used an exacto knife to remove the guts of the book by cutting carefully along the inside of the spine.

I got one of Tim Holtz's small ring binders, which fit perfectly into the book.  It attaches using brads and since I didn't want the brads to show up on the outside of the spine I cut a piece of vintage sheet music the same size as the book and then attached the ring binder to that.

I then glued the sheet music down into the book to put it all together.


Once that was done I decorated the cover of the book.

I used one of Coffee Break's window cut-outs and covered it in some vintage glitter.  I put a little piece of mica behind it to give the window some glass and then added a Debrina Pratt collage image that's from one of her Christmas sheets.

I added some German foil and the little metal tag that says "breathe" both of which came from Retro.  The bird was actually in silver but since the cover was all in gold tones I used my airbrush attachment and my Copics to color it to match a little better.  I covered the "story" tag with mica to give it some strength and then attached it with a snow-flake brad.

That's about it for the cover.  Over the next week or so I'm going to try and get all my pages done and posted, so stay tuned!