craftgrrl | Betsy-Tacy Book Journal (Reply)

Yesterday I wanted to try making a book journal, due to seeing all the cool people at craftster.org make them. At my school library they have a few old books for sale for ten cents, and I found a Betsy~Tacy book there. I loved the Betsy-Tacy books when I was little, and this one was the original cover, published in 1940.

This took me around three or four hours to make, but I adore how it came out. I don't have a "before" photo, but it looked basically the same, except it had that gross plasticy covering thing that the libraries put on. I just ripped that off, glued the paper cover to the book, and modge podged it for protection. It was really easy to rip out the pages, since the book was falling apart anyway. I cut out a thin rectangle from a record sleeve and glued it to the spine for extra support.

I glued ribbon to the sides so I could tie it and one thin ribbon on the spine for a bookmark.

I tried to coptic stitch, but after about an hour of frustrated sewing and a tangled mess in front of me, I just sewed up each magazine (or whatever they're called- I had ten stacks of four sheets of paper, folded in half. I sewed up each stack of four sheets along the fold, then I just glued the ten stacks to the binding.) The journal has 160 pages.

For the inside cover, I cut out all the ADORABLE illustrations from the book, and modge podged them together onto cream-colored cardstock. This is my favorite part.

In the middle of the book, I added a pocket (since this will be an idea journal, and I always scribble down things on random scraps of paper, I wanted a place I could keep them all together) by folding a piece of cream colored cardstock and sewing it up on the bottom and side. Then I glued two of the larger illustrations on each side