Papertrey Bloghop and a Birthday Present

Unfortunately the electronic gremlins invaded our house Friday afternoon. It started with our modem breaking. Thankfully Rich was able to get us a new one quickly and that problem was resolved. Saturday Emilia accidentally spilled water on her new laptop Rich bought her in August. We thought it was toast but thankfully Rich got it up and running again, the keyboard seems to be fried though. He ordered a new keyboard off eBay the other day so hopefully that will fix the problem. Then on Sunday my 6 month old vacuum burned up. I forgot to send in the warranty so now I have to buy a new one. Hopefully that is all that is going to break now since they say things happen in threes. Unfortunately Rich also found out Friday that his company is cutting back their hours at work the next few months so we really need things to stop breaking now.
Anyways on to some good things to share now. Today is the 25th of the month which means it is time for another Papertrey Bloghop. This month's challenge was to build your own floral embellishment for a card or 3D item. Friday was my niece Alexandra's 13th birthday. She loves to write so I knew I wanted to make a journal for her to write her story ideas in. When I saw the bloghop challenge I thought it would be a perfect way to incorporate the two

I started by cutting 2 pieces of chipboard then covered them with some floral fabric I had gotten from Hobby Lobby awhile back. When I was done with that I cut some lined notebook paper to fit inside then I lined the front and back covers with some Papertrey Plum Pudding cardstock.
After that I used my new Bind It All to punch the holes and bind it together. To personalized the cover I cut out the letters from some white foamboard using the Cuttlebug Hippie Chick Alphabet then I covered the letters in Crystal Effects and sprinkled fairy dust on them to make them sparkle. I got the idea for the flower from this video on Julie Buhler's blog but I also incorporated some of this technique from this video for making lollipop flowers into it as well. I still made a few changes though. I cut the three circles with my small Nestabilities dies instead of drawing them. I also distressed the edges of the rose with some Tattered Rose distress ink and added 4 small pearls to the middle instead of just one. I drew the leaves on some PTI Spring Moss Cardstock and tore them out then I painted a small amount of gesso on the edges and sprayed them with water. When they were moistened enough I molded the paper to give them more dimension and left them to dry.
I finished the journal off by tying some PTI Plum Pudding saddle stitched ribbon, Spring Moss Twill ribbon and Sweet Blush Polka Dot ribbon around the wires. I added some hot pink gingham ribbon I had from Hobby Lobby too. The finished size of the journal is 51/4x51/4 and has 100 pages. I plan on giving the journal to Alexandra on Thursday when we have Thanksgiving dinner. We will also celebrate her birthday and my dad's birthday which was Saturday then too. I hope you have enjoyed my project and it has inspired you to make some floral embellishments like these. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a good night.