Good morning all! How many of you love journals and little notebooks? I do, but I collect them more than I write in them. I have one on my desk to keep track of passwords and addresses of all my on-line friends, but to sit and write a daily entry is not something I do. Well wait a minute, I guess I do – I blog! Hahahaha – I’m tickled at myself – duh! When I was a senior in high school, I wrote my first journal entries. My Senior English teacher had given us an assignment, “What I Did on My Christmas Vacation.” Well for me, it was fun! My parents had left in November and traveled west. The day school recessed for break, my sister and I boarded a plane and met them in California. We spent two weeks traveling in the motor home, heading back to Indiana by the southern route. Of course, my parents had taken the northern route out to California. I wrote every day where we were, what we did and what we saw! Last year my mother gave me back the yellowed and dog-eared pages, stapled in the corner, with ink smudges. That paper will be 32 years old December of this year. This small school assignment started Trip Journals for my family. Every year my parents would travel for extended periods of time and my mother began writing down where they were and what they were doing. I have to admit that I got a great kick out of reading my old paper again. So when my youngest daughter, Mallory, and my husband went to Europe last summer, I made her a journal to take with her. She wrote every day about all the exciting places and things they were seeing and doing.

One week from today, August 15, we take Mallory to college. She will be a freshman, attending the same college both her dad and I did, 3 hours from home and without a car for the first few months. We’ve shopped for the basic necessities, linens, desk items, ipods, blow dryers, everything the normal teenage girl would need while away at school. We’ve told her once we get her moved in, we can access her needs then and if necessary go out and purchase any other items she will need. There is only one thing that she has asked me to make for her, and that’s a new journal! YES, my baby wanted a journal!!!!! So while we were shopping one day at Target, we picked one up that could be easily altered.

Now Mallory is an Audrey Hepburn fan and has seen all of her movies (and owns most of her favorites on DVD). Her bedroom here at home is decorated in black, white and a blue that resembles SU’s Cool Caribbean, and has posters of Audrey Hepburn on the walls. Luckily in one of my shopping frenzies at eclectic Paperie, I had picked up some Tinkering Ink papers – Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Marlena Dietrich. If you haven’t seen these papers, they are black and white double-sided papers with the reverse image on either side. Very cool! I sent Mallory off to the internet to find some pictures of Audrey Hepburn that she would like me to use on the journal. She has done this before – she made a desk in art class one year that we painted black and then she decoupaged close to 40 pictures of her favorite actress on the top. I don’t believe there’s a space on the top of the desk that you can actually see black paint, and if there is, it’s very minuscule.

Here is Mallory’s journal completed and put all back together!

The journal that we bought had dividers and pockets, and since they were brown I made new black ones to replace the originals and then attached tabs made from the SU Round Tab Punch and attached the tabs with eyelets. I picked out a few pieces of chipboard, covered them with some scraps of the designer paper, and used Making Memories rub on sentiments on the pictures and chipboard. I wanted to use sentiments that would pertain to her first year away from home and this great adventure she has before her.

Paper: Black; White; Tinkering Ink Lauren Bacall, Marlena Dietrich and Humphrey Bogart from eclectic Paperie

Accessories: Mod Podge, Making Memories Rub On Sentiments, SU On Board Accents and Simon Lower Chipboard, Ribbon, Brads, Photos from the Internet, Eyelets, Sanding Block, Crop-o-dile, SU Round Tab and Spiral Punches

I hope she enjoys this journal as much as I enjoyed making it for her!