Scrapping by Design

My Christmas gift giving this Holiday season includes these two hand-made garden journals.

Both of these garden journals are wire bound, using the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL PINK VER 2 SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL

If you are not familiar, I have a video demo of the Bind-it-All at this link.

I made the two journals using essentially the same design — but with a different style and layout orientation.

The first one has a light floral design, and has a portrait orientation. This book features coordinated scrapbook papers with matching beads, flowers and stickers that I purchased especially for the project. Therefore, the colors and images work together well.

The second has a rustic, grunge look which I hope will be reminiscent of a garden. It has a landscape layout.  I made this one completely from my stash, so I did not achieve the amount of coordination that the floral one has. Although the picture above does not show this embellishment, the rustic journal is closed with another Zutter product, a very nice little clasp, called the Bind-It-All Closure-Frame. You can see it in the video below. The rustic one also contains collage images with a garden theme, most of which I have covered with glitter using the burnished velvet technique.

Both garden journals contain places for seed packages, pages intended to hold photographs and journaling and decorated envelopes to contain receipts, invoices, newspaper clippings, articles, etc.  There are also several pages of graph paper for sketches, several pages of lined notebook paper for notes, and four miscellaneous pages that can be used for notes, clippings, sketches, dried flowers or whatever.

Thanks to various members of my CST Yahoo group who advised me on content. I am not a gardener and wasn’t sure what to include.

Here is the video showing the pages of the journals.  At one point, I make mention of a product called the Microfleur, which is listed on Amazon as the Large Microwave Flower Press For Drying Flowers. It is a great little tool for drying flowers and leaves in the microwave. Undoubtedly you can dry them without this tool, but the Microfleur does simplify things.

I made three of these garden journals, one right after the other. I truly hope the recipients like them. None are likely to visit my blog so the gifts should be a surprise.