I love Anthropolgie.  The items they carry are so exotic, unique and quirky.  The type of things that make me happy.  The one thing I do not like however, are the prices.  I realize the prices stay high because of the uniqueness of all their items, but this twenty-something can’t break her budget to splurge on Anthropolgie goodness.  Dreaming….

The other day I perusing the Anthro website, just searching for eye candy when I came across this journal. And boy do I love journals, almost as much as I love Anthropolgie.  But $28 for journal?  That’s not even a little to steep for me, that’s a sheer cliff type of steep.  When I purchased my first Moleskine back before I left on the WR I debated for months, and that was only $12! (Maybe I’m just cheap?).

So, as the avid DIYer that I am I decided to make an attempt at creating my own version of this journal, and here’s how you can make on to.

It all started out with a composition book and some spray paint…

I bought this composition book way back in August, not because I needed it for a class but because it was 25 cents and I knew it would come in handy eventually!  To be useful for this project the marbled yellow on the front had to go so I headed you to my garage armed with newspaper and spray paint and went to town.

My first step was to paint the inside of the front and back colors.  While having multiplication tables can by useful in some instances they are not appealing to the eye and need to go.  So I wrapped the bound paper with newspaper and masking tape so that I wouldn’t get any paint on them, grabbed my can of gold spray paint, and sprayed away.

It took about 2 coats to make the black lines completely disappear, but I think it turned out well!  Then, when the front flap was finished I flipped it over and sprayed the back flap as well.

When the interior had dried I flipped it over, pulled out my purple spray paint and painted the front and back covers.  Unfortunately I didn’t realize my paint was glossy, so it didn’t give me quite the look I was going for, but the modge podge fixed that later.  The covers took about 3 coats to get right, and in the end that was some dripping issues (totally my fault) but it turned out ok, and the “blemishes” would be covered by the lace design anyway.

While I was letting the layers of paint dry I set to work on the lace design that would be applied to the front.  I used a piece of just plain printer paper to do this, however in hindsight I would have used a thicker paper like card stock and I think it would have turned out better.

Before I painted the composition book I traced it onto the piece of paper so that I knew exactly how big my design needed to be.  Then, look at the Anthro journal I sketched the design onto the paper that I wanted to use, tweaking it a littler bit.

Next, using my exact knife I cut out all of the little pieces, yes, all of them.  It was pain staking work.  I powered through like 3 episodes of Downton Abbey while I worked on it.  Love that show!

The final detail was to add dots along the scalloped lace line, but instead of using my exacto knife to do this I used my hole punches instead.  I have 2 different sized punches so getting the look I wanted was super easy.

Before attaching the paper to the book I lined it up to make sure it was just right then I grabbed my foam brush and modge podge and set to work, first covering the books cover with the sticky solution.  Can you see the places where the paint dripped and pooled?  Thankfully that paper covered them.

Finally it was time to attach the paper.  I laid my intricate cutout onto the cover and brushed the modge podge over the top, then, HORROR.  It looked awful!  Like a toddler had smeared paste all over it.  It wished I could just take it back, figure out a different way to fix it but it was to late. I nearly cried.  So instead I had to just was for it to dry to see if it would turn out ok.

It took a day for it to fully dry, but this is how it turned out in the end…

You can still notice some of the places where it puckered and creased, but overall I don’t think it looks so bad.  And like I said, if I were to try this again I would probably use a thicker paper and hopefully avoid the creasing issues.

Hope you liked it!