Altered Books

I finally got around to doing the collage work on my newest gratitude/positive thoughts journal since my other one is almost full.  I am so ticked about the bottom phrase...the contact paper stuck to the edge and pulled it over, covering the word 'start'.  I tried to fix it but the magazine paper was hopelessly adhered and was not coming off.  And of course I had to leave the number off the year that this will be finished.  

Inside front cover.  The pages have fortune cookie fortunes on them, or pics I've cut out from jewelry and other catalogs.

And the back of the journal.  My friend Angie made that pic for me as part of a set of scenics from Mt. Desert Island in Maine.  The others are hanging on some twine in my craft room.  

I bought this little book a few summers ago in Hyannis.  I'm such a sucker for Guatemalan textiles. The pages are handmade paper too.  I added that gold crescent to the cover.

I wanted to use those double sided frame/glass things, so I cut a hole in the pages and slipped the frame into the hole, gluing it in place the best I could then adding ribbon and rhinestones to hide the rough edges.  This project took quite a few days.

Not that I'm crazy about France or anything, but I did like that pic of Sacre Coeur from my ephemera book.  That was the only place in Paris that I truly thought was pretty when I visited in 1982. 

New Gratitude Journal

A couple years ago, my dear friend and college roomie Angie made me a Gratitude Journal, which is a composition book on which she did some awesome collage work.  I was supposed to write in it every day but I just couldn't keep up, esp. when some days I was thankful for the same things. So I started doing the gratitude lists once or twice a month which worked out better.  Plus I put thank you notes received from my friends, and some of my giveaway wins.  Finally, I started transcribing all the amazingly sweet and loving texts I get from my honey.  My phone only holds about 100 texts so I had to figure out a way to save them and I don't mind transcribing them at all.  

I finally ran out of room towards the end of March, so I made my own new Gratitude Journal which starts as of April 1.  This is the front cover.  I used bits from my paper craft supplies and I also cut stuff out of catalogs and magazines.  And that's a real metal key on the front too.

And the back.  I used double stick tape to place the items and then covered the whole thing with clear contact paper so it got a little bubbly and wrinkly in places.

This is the inside front cover.

Kind of a bad pic, but Harry Potter fans will instantly recognize and understand what 'Always' means.  The emotion behind it makes me tear up every time I think about it, and it reminds me of us, except unlike Snape, Russell got his 'Lily'.  "After all this time?"  "Always."

Yikes! Dirty camera sensor alert!  I shoot my crafts with the Pentax so please ignore the dark spots.  I also like to decorate the pages with pictures from catalogs and Chinese fortune cookie fortunes.

As a side note, I'm still keeping up with the Blessings Jar in the kitchen, but I'm noticing that much of what goes in there is also in my Gratitude Journal so it's kind of repetitive.  Do any of you note your blessings?