My Embellished Journal

     I saw a video on YouTube some time ago on how to spruce up a plain journal.  Here is my first attempt at making a plain Journal something rather wonderful.

     This journal is about 8.5 x 5.5.  I used 2 different pink patterned papers that coordinated with each other and cut them slightly smaller than the background paper, which is a dark grey.  I cut the top paper about 1/3 the size of the bottom pick paper and glued the top to the bottom.  I used a pretty black ribbon and glued the ribbon to the back side of the 3 paper stack - the grey on bottom, the full sized pink (the bottom pattern) and the shorter pink (top pattern).  I then used a hot glue gun to glue the whole thing to my journal cover.

     I dug through my scrap paper and found another pink patterned paper that coordinating with the other two and cut out a mat (upper left corner) and also cut another slight larger one using black paper and glued those two together.  I cut out  one of the die cut flowers (can use a store bought one also, or anything really) I actually cut 4 of them so that I could layer them, two in pink patterned papers and 2 in black and stuck a large foam dot in the center to raise the flower.  I also rolled the petals around a pencil to give the flower some definition.

     I cut out some scroll work (pretty sure it was from the Cricut Home Decor cartridge) in black and glued those on two corners.  I found a nice chip board piece in pink that said "Inspired" and put some pink glam gems on it.  I also put some of the same color gems in the center of the flower and in the scroll work.  I then cut out the word ME using the Storybook font from Cricut and also put some pink gems on the M and the E.

     The inside pages of this journal are actually pretty nice, not the plain large lined paper that you usually get in these journals which made the pages look nice, but to brighten them even more, I stamped in pink some scroll work on some of the pages and used another smaller scroll stamp and stamped in black on other pages. Not every page is stamped, maybe 30 total, but still I thought it looked nice.