Journal - Sea Life

Hi friends!  Emma here to share my first attempt at creating a mini-album using a journal (or think travelers notebook type book)!  This month's Grace Box kit came with the cutest journal and I thought it would be fun to try making a little journal/mini about a trip we made to Sea Life earlier this year.

I have to say that making this little book was so much fun!  I was actually a little intimidated to begin with but once I stopped getting hung up on "perfection" (and limiting the embellishing...which is hard for me) - I really enjoyed the process of putting this together.  It's far from perfect, but for my first attempt at using a journal book; I'm pretty happy with the end result.  And more importantly - I've got the photo's and stories recorded :)

The journal included in the Grace Box has 24 pages but that was far too many for me to fill so so I simply stitched a few pages together (I think I went with 2 or 3 pages, I wasn't exact every time, I just grabbed a few and ran the pages through my sewing machine to join them together).

I included things like the train timetable/ticket stubs and the map.

I kept my layouts fairly plain and had to continually remind myself not to go overboard with the embellishing.  Embellishments are my favourite part when putting layouts together so it was tricky!  I used a little from all the May kits in this book and I love how it all coordinates together so easily.  Those copper alpha's from the main kit are absolutely gorgeous (the photo's do not do them justice!) and I had to stop myself from using them on every page...but they do pop up on a few ;)

All my journaling was typed up on the computer and printed out on plain copy paper (I cheat and use a typewriter font).

To add a bit of colour through the album I used patterned paper on one side of the page.  Love the blue of this exclusive paper from the Main kit and the matching die-cuts (from the PL kit).

I even managed to work a sequin pocket page into it!  I'm forever using sequins/veneer pockets in my albums; I love the movement they create.  I used a piece of vellum in this journal though and just machine stitched around the outside.   It's hard to see in the photo's but I also cut a jelly fish shape from white cardstock and popped that inside with the green/blue sequins.

Originally I was not going to have anything on the outside of my journal but I have this annoying habit of adding "titles" to the spines/fronts of my mini-albums so I had to follow suit here.  I went with plain black alphas (from an older kit, Jan 2017 Add-on) and just stuck them onto a plastic divider I had sitting around (that I trimmed down to fit my journal).

And here's a quick little flip through the full journal!

I actually created this as the NSD challenges were being posted and I originally I thought I'd create a page per challenge, but as you can see, I failed miserably, haha.  I did get one sketch into it though!  The LHS page is based on the sketch shared by Michelle on Day 1 of the challenges ;)

So all up I got ONE challenge from NSD finished...which = a big fail for me haha.  I had the best intentions...  But on the plus side, I was so happy to see so many of you joined in on alot of challenges and that is AWESOME!  Did you have fun on NSD?  How many challenges did you manage to finish up doing?!  And for those of you that won; have you got your goodies yet?!  SO LUCKY!

Thanks for joining me on the blog today!  I hope you'll be inspired to try these journal books for yourself; they're not as intimidating as I thought they would be and I'm planning my next one already :)

Take care, Em xo