More mini-journal making: A last minute handmade holiday project! The perfect addendum to your store bought gift
Perhaps you’ve already done your shopping and you want to add a handmade addendum to your gifts to personalize them. Making mini-journals is the perfect way to do that. They are so fun to make. I’ve made about a million this gift season. I use mine like a blackberry minus the emailing and internet searching. I keep them in all of my bags for taking notes, writing down great ideas, or destinations I need to get to etc. I love giving gifts that are useful in some way and ephemeral. I mean permanence is nice but I love the idea that these are precious but only for a time. They’re meant for active use not just to sit pretty on a shelf someplace. Here are my other DIY craft projects for you to try as well: Mini-Journal making, gold leaf journals, festive necklace how-to, feather hair accessory how-to (all gift possibilities).
And now for the latest winter holiday themed journal how-to:
- Cut a piece of oak tag, metallic paper, and Kraft paper (or colored construction paper) for the “cover” the same size and fold like a card
- With a glue stick glue your “cover” to the oak tag and the metallic paper as inside paper
- Cut printer paper as your inside pages (I round the edges or cut in a wavy shape) and staple inside (If you want to hide the staples do this step before gluing the cover paper on the oak tag)
- Here’s where you get creative: Buy a snowflake stamp and stamp it all over cover to make a lacy snowflake effect, cut cool shapes out of metallic paper and glue on, get snowflake punchers from art/craft store and cut metallic snowflakes out and glue stick on to cover, use a matte knife (carefully) and cut out shapes to glue on to cover….any or all of these ideas are fun and easy to do and give the journal a wintery feel.
Et viola! Read the first journal making how-to for more binding techniques and enjoy this project. I suggest wrapping a small bunch of different size journals together as an addendum to a store bought gift or as a sole gift. Enjoy happy holiday crafting!
