Art Journal Every Day: Traveler's Notebook Progress

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here. 

Following up on last week's post: As promised, I've been working on my Traveler's Notebook.  If you follow me on instagram, you know that I've run into some snags, but things are coming along.  Slowly, but they are coming along.

I started the project by making my outside or the official (but unofficial because it's homemade) Traveler's Notebook.  That's the part that holds everything.  I used some leather remnants that I picked up at a local fabric store with no particular project in mind along with some leather paints I bought for a project that fell by the wayside.  (Proof that hoarding and buying things you don't need is a good and necessary thing!)

I painted three pieces of white leather with simple patterns and then attempted to stitch the whole thing together.  This is when I made a discovery: my sewing machines will sew through one layer of leather.  My machines will unwillingly sew through two layers of leather.  There is no way in hades that I can sew through three layers of leather. 

You'll notice that I have been using the plural.  I happen to have several different sewing machines.  None of them would do three layers.  Sigh.

The good news is that I am not a woman easily defeated!  I rejiggered my plans and accepted that it wouldn't be exactly what I had envisioned.  And so here is my cover (still missing elastic bands):

There are 6 pockets inside this cover:

I didn't have enough white leather to camouflage the sewing-through-two-layers issues, so I'm embracing the green contrast and the imperfection.

I also followed the video tutorial below...

...and made (or really, I'm in the process of making) several magnetic dashboards for myself.

As you can see, I used some of the prints from my Gelatin Printing/Magazine adventures earlier this week.  I also added vinyl to the front of each dashboard so that I would know what was inside of each one.

So that's where I am at the moment.  I expect I'll make more progress in the coming week!

I loved reading all of your thoughts on last week's Traveler's Notebook post.  If you have suggestions for tutorials/blog posts/cool projects/etc/ I would appreciate it if you'd pass them on!

Thanks for stopping by!