The Journal Ring begins

Dear Shayne,

I've signed up for a Journal ring on craftster -- basically, 6 of us pass around a journal and doodle inside of it, then send it on. It's inspired by the book Alphabetica so I think we're all doing a "Letters and Numbers" theme (although someone else might have picked another -- I won't know until I get their journal) (Oh, and then I'll be screwed, because I'm pretty much only prepared for letters and numbers... watch someone pick Stringed Instruments of Indonesia -- I'll be crying then.)

At any rate, I won't be able to post the rest of my pages until the ring is over (in May) so as not to spoil the surprise for the journal owners, but I can post what I've done on my own book (although I'll probably still be surprised when it comes back to me -- "I made this? Oh, yeah...")

I knew from the start that I wanted to use torn out pages of an old book to decoupage the front (Get it? Letters?) so I went to the thrift store (couldn't destroy any of my own books, now could I?) looking for just the right title. And I found... The Scarlet Letter! Tee hee! Letter! Get it? (Oh, yeah... of course you do...)


(The finished book actually has binder rings but I put the journal in the scanner for these photos, so I wanted the pages to be flat.)

Now, Shayne, I need to tell you about the awesome product I used to install those grommets you see there. It's the dorkily named Crop-A-Dile and, if you've ever struggled to hammer or [shudder] squeeze grommets into place before, this thing is the answer for you. In a word, it rocks. Is our blog PG-13? Cause I really want to say here... it fucking rocks. Really.

You just squeeze and... presto! Grommet! Furthermore, it also punches the holes for the grommets -- what you see here is chipboard with several layers of paper decoupaged over it. And it punched through all of that like butter! I swear! And I'm a total wuss!

Okay... this is turning into an infomercial for the Crop-A-Dile. I didn't intend that. Just wanted to tell you -- this thing is cool.

All right. I'm not the biggest fan of numbers, but I do like measuring tapes n' stuff, so I used this cool paper for the first end paper:


The back end paper is something different, with a bit of the measuring tape paper. That's also where the "sign in" card goes -- for everyone to sign the thing before sending it on. (Due to scanning, the forefront is clear and the background is blurry. I apologize, but... I'm lazy):


On the back page, I put a little "Thank you" note to everyone working on the book. It's in this envelope:


I used "2U" to address it because of the number/letter thing, but just in case they wondered if it was to them, I put an extra note under the flap:


(Hee hee -- I crack myself up!)

The back of the book is constructed like the front, but with a Z to finish it off:


Unfortunately, I did not notice that the Z was upside down until after I painted it. Oh, well -- artistic license, right?

Then I had to kick off the thing by doing the first page myself. I was kind of burned out by the time it came to this point, but I like what I ended up with:

(I have a lot of letter stencils!)

How stoked was I when I realized the letters in the word BEGIN were all in alphabetical order? Answer: Totally!

I sent it off this week and should be getting someone else's journal in the next few days. Let the anxiety begin!

love,
kelly