December Daily Art Journal | Covers and Spiral Binding

Hello again My December Journal, it’s time to make you into something more than loose papers spread out on my desk…

And Hello dear reader, you might remember that this themed art journal had a lot of yummy pages even before it became a book. I also finished the book covers (extremely yummy covers if you ask me) before I assembled the whole thing. The above two covers became the inside of the covers, all dressed in my favorite Christmas wrapping paper as you can see. I imagined the outsides like that too, but then I got into cut and paste mood, and added other things and some heart stickers…

Here are some close-ups of the covers:

Some favorite images and neon stickers… Fa-la-laaa!

Washi tape is the perfect semi-transparent addition to add between images, it separates them, and joins them.

This is how I make journal covers for my spiral bound notebooks: Cut two pieces of thick cardstock a little bit bigger than the pages. Cover them with collage, a kind of patchwork style that I love doing. I just use a glue stick and mostly thinner papers that will bend nicely over the edges of the cardstock. Sometimes I use washi tape over the edges too. Washi tape is da shit!

Once the whole surface is covered it’s time to run the whole thing trough the big ass whole punch that I got. It’s a Rentz spiral binding machine, and it looks like this:

Hole punch the pages, the cover and then add everything in the order you like. Then press the spiral together to close it and you’ve got a spiral bound notebook! Questions on that?

From this…

… to this:

A December Art Journal for 2014, and beyond I guess, made by yours truly iHanna.

Fancy, jolly and full of Christmas spirit even before Christmas starts! Here it is next to the previous one I made a few years ago:

Glad this is not something I tackle every year, or I would puke angels and jolly good santas. But also glad I decided to make another one this year. It felt right, and it still does even though I haven’t had much time to work in it. I’m thinking that I will journal and doodle inside it a bit tomorrow…

If you want to take a look back in time to see how the first December Journal was in progress and then all the pages in these three posts: the first part and the second part called Winter Schminter (best blog post title ever, right?) and then finally The December Journal part III. Enjoy!

Are you making your own December Journal yet?

Check out my Etsy Shop for chrissmassy paper packs ready to ship. My shop here

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