{Tutorial} Handmade Journal Cover

Hello!
In my excitement yesterday to post about my journals, I forgot to tell a little about our weekend! {If you are not interested and want to skip to the Journal cover tutorial, scroll down till you see the ************}

I asked a friend of mine to have my kids for the night on Friday {sleep over} She has two children whose ages fall sandwiched between mine.
They also went to go and play on a spur of the moment invitation at another friends house after school. So I had a whole day all to myself.
The funny thing is that it doesn't happen often like that, and I really relish the time alone. However, I do find little spurts during the day when I really miss their banter.

I find though, that I really put the time to good use. I cleaned my house like I normally do, and I started to prepare a meal that 1) I had not cooked before and 2) would not normally cook as I doubt the kids would eat it! But since it was just hubby and I, it was nice to prepare something a bit more sophisticated! I also used the time to work on the journals I posted about yesterday.

I made chicken breast fillets stuffed with a butter, garlic, parsley, lemon paste to on top of a bed of green beans, mange tout, peas in a rocket, basil, garlic, lemon and walnut dressing {stir fried}
plus a side salad and a glass of red wine!

I set the table for two and even had candles { I know, so romantic!} I don't often get to cook just for hubby and to actually sit down and enjoy a meal together and have an adult conversation. Normally it's about school activities, homework, etc etc.

Unfortunately all my photos were taken at night, so they didn't come out too well. So I'm not going to bother to post them.

We had booked to go and watch MIB3 so after dinner we went to watch that. {Quite disappointing. They lost the humor of the first one somewhere along the way.}After that, we decided to do something we probably haven't done in 15 years and that was go and watch another show straight after! So we went to the 10pm show and watched "The lucky one" . I had read the book, and the movie was quite sweet.

We got home at about midnight!

We enjoyed a leisurely 3-egg omelet and coffee the next morning and then at noon fetched our kids. So nice just to do that and not spend a fortune of going away! A stay-at-home self catering weekend without having to pay for the accommodation and fuel to get there!

********************Okay moving on..**************

I thought I would share with you how I did my covers for my handmade Journals.

They are really easy, really quick and really cheap!

All you need is:
* An old cereal box ( I used a 750g corn flakes box) Any cardboard box will do. You need to get 2 x 21cm x 15cm pieces and 1 x 3m x 21cm.
*tools like a cutting board, craft knife, craft glue and tape
*a piece of paper measuring around 40cm x 27cm
{I used a piece of sturdy cavallini wrapping paper

Step one:
Lay your three pieces of card in the center of your paper.
Leave a slight gap between each piece of about 5ml.
Make sure your edges line up top and bottom.

{the photo below was just to show you, the edges haven't been lined up yet!}

Step two
Glue all three pieces down to the back of the paper.
Fold your bottom edge over the card and tape down.
Turn it over and do the same with the top edge.

Step three

Fold each corner as if you were wrapping a present.

Step four
Tape down all corners. Once all your corners and edges have been taped down, you can now stick on some pretty paper to the front and back and spine of your Journal cover.

Here I simply cut a 12" x 12" paper in half, trimmed each piece so that it just covered the edge of the cardboard and over lapped (so that you don't see it). I also used a bit of the same wrapping paper i used for the front of the Journal cover for the spine.

Here you can see when it is folded or closed, you won't see any cardboard or gaps!

Step five
Adhere your Coptic stitch made signature book to the center of the spine. My signature consisted of 6 card stock pieces sewn together. I could easily have fitted in another two signatures of 6 card stock.

See the gap on each side of the signature? Easily enough room for one more signature on each side of this one.

And that is it! Really quick, cheap and easy to make your own Journals, Art Journals, scrap books etc!