via Free tutorial: how to prepare a travel journal before you go
Tutorial for a handmade Wine journal
Tutorial for a handmade Wine journal
I have made this wine journal for my dear sister Cathie for her birthday. She and her husband love to wine taste and I thought that this handmade diary would be a perfect gift.
I covered a 5×7 paper notebook with maroon designer paper. Before covering I had used clear heavy gel through a stencil to embellish the front cover and rubbed gold acrylic paint to highlight the design. I also purchase some wine dimensional stickers from Michaels and glued them on to the cover. Finally, I used some silver holographic duct tape that I got at the Dollar tree to cover the spine of the book.
Here is a close up of the journal with the elastic tie and a journal charm that I made to keep it together.
I made the Wine tasting notes on my computer and resized the image down so that it would fit the pages in the journal. Behind each tasting page is a page envelop to keep any information behind the form.
I stamped and cut out some wine embellishment to put inside the notebook and added some journal stickers to dress up the pages.
This wine journal is simple and not hard to make but it is a heartfelt handmade gift for a dear sister.
We are home and getting ready to go back to Europe
Free Tutorial how to make a mixed media journal Enchanted Forest Graphic 45
Free Tutorial how to make a mixed media journal Enchanted Forest Graphic 45

Enchanted Forest travel journal
I love making these recycled travel journals and thought I would write up a tutorial on how I made this one. I started out with the paper; Enchanted Forest by Graphic 45. Then I got an old 2 ring book I found at an estate sale.

inside of binder
I used the pages in the binder to measure and cut the paper for the journal. Most of the paper was white card stock, some of the pages were from the EF ( enchanted forest) paper.
I cut out the princess from the paper and a backing paper for the cover image.
Covered the cover with black card stock and used golden heavy gel gloss and a stencil to texture the cover.
I then painted the dried texture with 4 colors of Lumiere paint and brushed it with a cloth to mute and blend the colors.
I glued down the background and used foam dots to raise the princess image up on the cover. I added Swarovski crystals to the image.

crystals on the side of the photo
Decided to add extra bling on the side of the cover.
Then I went through the pages; distressing the sides and adding handmade pockets and tags. I cut out some of the images from the Graphic 45 paper to make embellishments.

This is a tip out page that I added for more room to put photos into the journal
And I made a small book to tuck into a pocket to put my private thoughts.
Here is the journal finished and ready to sell in my Etsy store.
Hope this helps you create a journal of your own from a recycled book. Please leave any comments or questions below. Thanks for dropping by.