Canvas and Lace Wrapped Vintage Journal

Hello and welcome to the first day of the month .... 

..... and of course another new month at Mini Album Makers Challenge where the Design Team inspire you with fabulous mini book makes. Our sponsor this month is Eileen Hull and what better way than to acknowledge this amazing designer by using her latest Wrapped Journal die. 

But before I get into the details and the (rather long) tutorial can I please urge you to hop on over to our Challenge blog post where you an find all the details of this month's challenge and of course the wonderful and amazing mini books created by my fellow designers on this fabulous team.

Just click the link HERE.

I have wanted a journal for a while that I could keep a track of my handspun wool and what I have knitted with it (tension, needle size, etc.) and so decided to make a tactile textile journal that can sit in my knitting basket.

Here are a few closeups of the finished journal:

I have used canvas for the cover, tea dyed lace and ribbons and some favourite vintage papers for the inside.

I used tea dyed papers for the inside signatures.

Where possible I have machine stitched everything in place before adhering the 

canvas to the covers.

I will now take you through the steps of how I made the cover and fitted it and also how the inside signatures came together.

TUTORIAL:

 I cut my canvas to size leaving a 1/2" wide turnover all the way around. 

I marked where the edges of the front cover were lightly in pencil and played around with a design.

I then took everything back to the first layer and started stitching pieces here and there to anchor them down. The canvas got very frayed during my journeys to the sewing machine (in another room!) and I wished I had left more than 1/2" around the edges!

Finally I sewed on my metal embellishments and the buttons as I knew I wouldn't be able to do this once it was stuck down.

I did some experiments with some spare board and canvas using glue and red tape and decided that the red tape did a superb job and was infinitely cleaner to work with! I placed tape on the sides of all the main pieces.

I was struggling to hold the canvas in the right place so decided to stick down front cover edge. This did give me a base to work from as my sewing had made the cover slightly squint!

I could then start bending the board on the creases of the journal as I applied the canvas.

The corners were mitred but don't cut them too close to the board as the canvas started to fray as I was sticking it down.

Everything worked out neatly but I did put some PVAglue on the mitred corners to secure the fraying edges.

Top edge done, starting on the bottom edge.

A piece of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper doesn't quite meet edge to edge so I used my die to line it up centrally and then mark where the creases were and used my scoring board to make the creases. I just knew if I tried to cut it in the die it would all go squint!

I also stuck this piece down with the red tape making sure I bent each side of the journal as I stuck it down so it would lie flat but also close.

I glued some lace down the side edges to fill in where the paper hadn't reached to the edge.

I made four signatures from tea stained paper and adhered a lovely tag to the front of each signature.

I had some of the paper left so made a pockets for the middle of two of the signatures.

There are also a few pockets here and there made from left over tea stained papers.

I had inserted the signatures with elastic which didn't look too great on the outside so again used some lace and ribbon to cover these up. I can still remove the signatures from the inside of the journal when I want to write up my notes.

If you are still with me well done! I really do love this new die from Eileen and just know it will be very popular (as are the others in the series!).

As always thank you for joining me and happy crafting!

Jennie x