Monthly Report, Ha

Making journals is like sewing....has a whole bunch of terms pertaining to the subject....like 'belly bands' [for holding stuff to a page, like the red/yellow/black one above] and 'tuck spots' [like the pink and purple on edge of pages] and and...well, I don't know what to call the 'fabric/paper/place-holder' I made [the 'tie' looking thing] The groups of pages themselves are called 'signatures.'

These journals have one each, made up of 20+ pages.  I used liquid watercolor paint to spray papers, and though the colors don't look that great here, they are very happy in person.  I am hoping to donate to a fundraiser, so I wanted these child friendly.  I even added a picture of my own, to a page. No worry about copyrights that way!  The [sprayed] envelopes are for putting stuff in, and I glued them to the page so they have top  'pockets', which is another journal term.  [also a sewing term]

I found word search puzzles  on Etsy and thought that would be perfect for these. I know 'vintage' may not interest a child, but I didn't want to mess with the way the  print set up is.  I printed them on my 'watercolor' paper.  [they come 2 to a page, and since the paper is folded in half, the puzzles are separated]

I also found a great storage idea for all the digi downloads I am getting, and when searching office supplies, I found these pocket-page things. [the orange thing in the pix] Of course I had to make a collage for the front of the binder.

Thought you might want to be able to enlarge this on it's own.

And now for some family news.....This little smiling fellow, Max, also known as #7, is going to be ONE tomorrow.  A whole year old, oh my. 

#7 with #3, his cousin

The party was last Sat. and my husband loves to take pix of our girls eating.  I went around and got autographs in the 'guest book' I made for Max.

I used brown packing paper for the ABC pages, which I sprayed on via large stencils I came across in a drawer [which caused a light-bulb moment], with ink spray from Ranger. I sewed, on the machine, across the tops and bottoms of paper since I doubled it to make it stronger. I added coffee-dyed binder paper between each Letter.  I made up 'cards' of art work by my mom, the dog, me, the 'giraffe lady', and daughter Steph, the bugs.  I also looked for "M" things and found a color sample, 'mixed' berry-something, and a Monopoly game card. Turns out, Mediterranean Ave. is the first property, so very fitting for a 'first' birthday....besides being an 'm' thing.  The 2 'signatures' are held in by elastic, so the 'photo' pages can be rearranged, or added to or...or...The ABC pages and their binder page additives, are all sewn together!  My machine was not super happy, but it had no choice. The hardest part was getting all the correct letters sprayed to the correct side of the page!  The A and Z letters are on the same piece of paper. Other pages have 4 letters on them. And yes, they are all in the correct order!!