Guest Blogger!

Hello everyone! I am thrilled to be guest blogging for you today on A Place to Be Happy. My name is Sabrina and I hail from the South – Georgia to be specific. I have lived here for the past sixteen years and I love it. I have been crafting heavily for just over a year. My interest runs from scrapbooking to cards, to vinyl, to glass etching, back to scrapbooking, etc. I really like a bit of it all, and am thankful for the opportunity to try new things all the time. The project I am going to share with you today is one I have been working on for a while. It is a music/poetry journal that I put together a journal for Iesha. She is the daughter of a dear friend and she is turning nineteen in a few weeks. This is going to be one of her father’s gifts to her. A little bit about Iesha - She's a pretty talented young woman who likes to write poetry and she also has a fantastic voice. This girl can sing! She also loves the color pink, flowers, and leopard skin. Whenever I am making something like this for someone else I try to incorporate at least a few elements that I know they will particularly like.






I used Cinch book boards to make this journal. It's a 8 1/2 x 11 book. I covered it with pink paper and then Announce cardstock by 7gypsies, using gloss Modge Podge for paper. I really like the particular shimmer the gloss modge podge leaves on a page. Iesha's name is spelled out using chipboard letters that I've had in my stash. I used hot glue to adhere the letters because I imagine this journal is going to get a bit of wear and tear and I wanted to make sure they would stay on the cover. The girl is cut from the Cricut Forever Young cartridge and the flowers and white flourish are also from my stash.

The inside of the front panel are the lyrics from the song "Dance with my Father" by Luther Vandross. This is Iesha's favorite song so I wanted to include it.

The next page is made up of card stock covered by a clear cardstock with a flourish design. I stitched them together with my Sew Easy and then added a frame at the top of the page for her father to include a small picture of her, again stitched to adhere it to the page. I found the frame in the Make the Cut gallery and was able to find some scraps that were big enough to use to cut it out. I printed the sentiment "Portrait of the Artist as as a Young Woman" on my computer and just cut it out in rectangles.

The next side of the frame page is something my friend wrote for his daughter. He also dabbles in poetry, and I thought it was important that he include something of himself in this gift to her. I added a few peace sign stickers that I picked up at Michael's recently. After this page, there are about 40 blank pages of white paper for Iesha to write, draw, or do whatever she chooses to do. There are about 40-45 blank pages in-between each of the pocket pages.

I wanted to include dividers for the journal and I wanted them to be useful so I decided to include pockets for Iesha to stash notes in. I created the pocket by welding a wave and a rectangle image from the Cricut Plantin Schoolbook cartridge with a treble clef I found on the Quarter Note cartridge. I used the treble clef's shadow image for welding, and cut out the regular image and in pink and placed it on top. I then stitched the pocket to the page and included three paper clips with cute sentiments on them. They are made by 7Gypsies and I love them.

The other side of the pocket divider is simple - just the word Create cut from the Home Decor cartridge, and another Jolee flower from my stash.

The next pocket page divider uses the same wave and rectangle but this one is welded to the shadow of a music note, also found on the Quarter Note cartridge. I placed a popsicle stick in the page so you could actually see the pocket. The paper clips are again made by 7gypsies.






Serendipity was cut from the Graphically Speaking cartridge. This is one of my all-time favorite cartridges. I almost always find something on that cartridge to use on a project this big.

This is the last pocket page divider. The microphone is also from Quarter Note. I welded the shadow to the pocket and cut the microphone out of white paper and then applied adhesive and Martha Stewart glitter. I think it looks pretty cute. One thing I forgot to mention is that I did include tabs on the side of the dividers - that way she can easily flip to the different section of the journal. There is more stitching around the pocket, and of course, more 7gypsies paper clips.

The other side of the pocket page is again something simple - "Explore" is cut from the Home Decor cartridge and accented by several different flowers from my stash.

The back of the journal uses the same paper from the first side, again with gloss Modge Podge. I cut the "journey" sentiment from Graphically Speaking out of chipboard three times, adhered them together with Modge Podge, and then adhered the same word cut in pink. I blinged it up a bit with some black gems. The mats are cut from the Storybook cartridge and the flourish is from Recollections.






Thanks so much for stopping by and I really hope you enjoyed this project. It was several weeks in the making and I am thrilled with the way it turned out. You can drop by to visit me anytime at www.sabrioletdesigns.blogspot.com. I want to thank Leslie again for giving me the opportunity to share my work with some new people. I hope you all have a fabulous day!



Sabrina