DIY Journal Cover

Basically, I'm not a very creative person. I've always wanted to be, but whenever I create something 'crafty' it never truly turns out how I want it to look. I guess it's my inner perfectionist complaining. When I was in primary school my friend, Molly, was super creative. She had her own craft room, her mum was an awesome sewer, and I remember going over to her place to make a plethora of home made goodies. Polar fleece blankets that we sewed buttons on (I still credit learning how to hand sew buttons to this creation), coffee coasters recycled from roof tiles and decorated with purple and lime green glitter paint, the list goes on.

Prior to changing the content that I was posting here, one of the ideas I had was to do a crafty project every weekend. I have saved so many DIY goodies, thinking that I'll do them one day and I never seem to get around to it, so I feel that this is a good excuse. Although I don't have the money to do a project every week at the moment, I'm planning to do more of these in the coming months.

1. Journal from Typo / 2. Household scissors / 3. Glue gun from Lindcraft / 4. Googly eyes from Lindcraft / 5. Tape from Typo / 6. Glitter paper from Lindcraft

After Rookie Day and Tavi Gevinson's talk last week, I was super inspired to collage and create more. Tavi is an avid journal writer. In the past she's even created journals that she matched her clothes, handwriting and what she was inspired by to. I liked the idea of having multiple journals for multiple things so I decided to make something that I could collage and write about my inspirations in, rather than just keeping them on a folder aptly titled 'inspo' on my desktop.

This is a super simple DIY as I'm totally a beginner, and I really feel like I need to google how to make/photograph a DIY blog post after this. 

1. Find some awesome paper that you like. I chose glitter because I'm feeling inspired by girly goodness right now.

2. Measure out how much paper you will need against the journal. It's good to have about 5cm either edge on all four sides of the journal. (You will need to do this twice if you are going to use two different colours like me) 

3. Cut slits into the corners of the paper, (if you contacted your books as a primary schooler you will be a pro at this)

4. Put an obscene amount of glue on all of the paper. Fold over the journal edges and make sure the cover is all smooth. Now you're ready for decorating.

5. If you used two colours like me you will need to glue down the spine of the journal somehow. I decided to use my pretty tape to hide my horrible cutting skills and stick down the difficult glitter paper. 

6. Use the glue gun to glue on your magazine clippings/internet pictures to the cover of your journal. Especially if you're using the glitter paper because a normal glue still WILL NOT WORK (I had to learn this the hard way)

7. Decorate with googly eyes because they are awesome.

8. Let everything dry and then you're good to start using your awesome, new, personalised journal.

I suck at DIYs, right? 

This is what mine ended up looking like. I bought some rhinestone stickers to create 'DIVA' and the crown (I also created the word 'sassy' which is now on my laptop). On the back I stuck on some things I'm feeling inspired by and connected to. Hubba bubba because it's delicious and I ate it on the train home after Rookie Day and it was fabulous. 'Captcha In The Rye' was a screenshot I took of a code I literally had to type in to post a comment to a blog. I loved the reference to The Catcher In The Rye which kind of changed my life. The female gender symbol because I was feeling all manners of girl empowerment after Rookie Day and other delicious goodies because sweet food is yummy.

If you decide to make a journal after reading this, post a link to a photograph of it in the comments below! I love seeing other people's creations.And if you think that this was totally painful and I should never attempt a DIY ever again (I kind of agree with you) please let me know also :)