Rule #1 Journals for 2009

I won't explain what Rule #1 is, anyone who knows me well enough knows what that is! I have made two journals for 2009, one for my husband and one for me. My journal is quite large at 12 inches square, only so that I can put full size sheets of paper on the page and still have room to write should I need to add more. I chose to do one month at a time with a page for each day......thus only one month at a time, I don't think I could sufficiently bind 365 pages at once! I plan to use birthstone colors as a guide for each month, so January is garnet themed...........

In the new Cloth Paper Scissors magazine (Jan./Feb. 3, 2009) there is an article by Alisa Burke (author of Canvas Remix) and I followed her easy directions to make paper out of plastic grocery bags. Very easy and very cool to work with! I painted a piece with purple metallic acrylic cheapo paint, sewed my star flower onto it and then sewed on a Starbucks coffee sleeve. I also added a line from Dick and Jane (thanks, Jane!) that has Spot on it (we dog-sat a cool dog named Spot!). You can see how wrinkly and unique the paper turned out and if you look closely can see the grocery name in red at the bottom peeking through the paint: