Graduation Journal

I am working on some Graduation Gifts. There are personalized journals, that they can right down their dreams, goals for their future & also what God does in their lives' along the way. This is the 2nd one I made & I love how it turned out.

I bought $3 journals from Big Lots. This is what I started with.

I pried open the binding with my hands & took the covers off.

This is what my finished covers looked like. I painted the spine part of the cover where the holes are.  I sanded it some first so the paint would stick better. Then I cut the cover card stock about 1" larger than the cover on 3 sides. Then I notched out the corners by cutting up to the corner from each edge. Then I cut little slivers off those cuts. That helps it fold & lay nicely. I used a foam brush & put Mod Podge on the cover then placed my card stock on it. Then I turned the cover over & put Mod Podge where the cover would fold over to the inside & pressed it all down smooth. Then I cut the inside piece about 1/8" short on 3 sides & put Mod Podge on the cover & then adhered the inside piece down. After that I cut out & adhered the bird, name, and believe. I also stickled the word believe so it would stand out better. Make sure it is completely dry before brushing Mod Podge smoothly over all the cover. It dries clear but you will still see any brush strokes so I try to brush it all in the same direction & make it look nice. Repeat all the steps for the back cover but don't embellish. On this journal I ran out of paper, so the inside of the back cover was too small so I made a folder out of another scrap piece I had. Another mess up I fixed was where the flower is on the inside of the back cover. Some of the paper riped when I was applying Mod Podge so I cut out the flower from the patterned paper & covered it with it. So make your mistakes into works of art.

After all of it dries put the covers back in the binding & gently pinch the binding back together.

Here is the graduation card I designed to go along with the journal.