journal making

I've been making journals lately. I really like to capture the everyday stuff but rarely ever do it. I have this desire to leave a record or memory of myself for the kiddos.

Losing my mom at an early age and wishing I knew more about her and to remember our everyday lives as kids spurs this desire.

4 years ago we went to visit my dad for my birthday. I thought it would be a good idea to journal it. It morphed into a "vacation journal". Everytime we went camping or on some kind of vacation I will take it with us and record the days events. I've been very faithful with it too. I guess only because we don't go anywhere very often. I mean heck, it only took 4 years to fill the little one I had. Here is a pic of that original one. Its a little 5x5 one.

It uses the retired Happy Camper set. We have a tent trailer and I love it!

I've kept all kinds of things inside.

...........Beth, wouldn't it be easier to just scrapbook all this?.............

Yes, it would look nicer, no doubt. But I know I wouldn't do it.

This doesn't have pics in it, but I do keep little memento things like receipts or little maps or busines cards of places we like.

Here is a shot of the inside front cover. I made a little pouch to hold things. There's feathers, and a poison plant guide and other stuff.

On this page you can see where our buddy Scott was making out the menu for one of the trips. He has to know what he is eating on any given day. He is so funny! Even though I tease, you know I love you Scott!

I also keep lists for what I need next time we go.

So that one got finished when we went camping last month. Time to make a new one. I picked up a little $1 one at Michaels and transformed the front cover.

I know Smokey looks like he's about 5000 feet tall. Paul Bunyan watch out!

When we go to Mammoth I always have to go to the Visitors Center. Its a beautiful building with lots of info and you can buy maps and t-shirts and stuff.

Anyway, I picked up these bookmarks a few years ago. I do use one when I'm reading which is why you can see its torn a little on his leg.

So I just got done reading the 6th Harry Potter book, (more on that on another day), and it was laying on my desk and I noticed that it fit perfectly on my journal.

So I took my handy dandy scissor on the cutter kit and free formed some hills from kraft, soft sable and choc. chip cardstock. I then stamped them with the polka dot and sanded backgrounds and then sponged.

I had some of those Happy Camper trees already cut out from some other project and used those too. Then I freehanded, (obviously), a cloud and used some Michaels stamps for that.

We have new little alphabets in the catalog, much cuter.

Then I used the Spiral Note Punch to punch out the side and it fit perfectly! I didn't have to take the book apart to put it on. Wahooo! I was afraid I would have to.

So there ya go. Easy enough huh? Now I will put the starting and ending year on the cloud. I don't know that we'll be going anywhere else this year so I didn't put anything yet.

Now this is another version of a journal. We did this at a class I had last year. I used a Composition Notebook. I use this one for my Stampin' Up! notes when we have a teleconference or when I go to convention, which I'm not going to this year :( poor me :(

We used the Tombow Multi Glue to adhere everything except the spine, we used sticky
strip for that.

We crumpled up the paper for the spine before we adhered it so it would move freely

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I used the Spiral Note Punch here too and the Round Tab Punch. This also uses the

Taffy Alphabet.

Here is my band journal. I used another composition notebook. I know I have non-SU! stuff on here, (shame on me), but it works so well!

I did use the Schoolbook Serif Alphabet. I love that alpha.

The boy is on the drumline which is why I have the snare drum sticker there. You'll get plenty of band pics here coming up pretty soon since marching season is already started.

I take this with me when we have booster meetings. 'Cause I have a horrible memory and I can't remember anything.

I tell myself its because I have too much info or ideas in my head. But I think really its just because I have a slow leak.

Check out those cute note shaped brads.

Good Lord Almighty, but this became a long post! Sorry about that. If you read through the whole thing, God Bless You! Well, God Bless you anyway, I mean, you know................................