Two SUPER EASY ways to create a journal/art journal from an old book.

I wanted to create my own journal instead of buying those expensive ones, So I bought a couple cheap old books from goodwill and a pad of mixed media paper from michaels for 5 dollars and went home to figure it out. I did A LOT of searching in the internet. I didn't have any special tools, and really did not want it to take hours to make. After a lot of searching, I decided I was just going to give it a go myself, my own way. Here are the two that I came up with.

For my first journal, I used an old book that had been stitched together, not glued. However, I don't think it would really matter since I just used the front and back covers. First I took all of the pages out. 

Then I took the mixed media paper and measured it to the the size I wanted it to be and cut it into pages. I thought about adding in some other patterned paper as well, but decided against it. (Sorry I did not take pictures of this process.) I took a yarn needle and poked 3 holes where I wanted the embroidery thread to go. I used this first page to help gauge where the holes needed to go in the rest of the book. Once that was done, I poked the holes into the front and back covers where they needed to go. I had a thimble to use for pushing my needle through, but you may need to use a hammer and nail if you can't get yours through. Then I cut three pieces of embroidery thread, and sewed my book together. I didn't do any special stitches. I just threaded it through from the back to the front and then went through the same hole again and tied it off, and cut the extra string. Then I was done :)

I decided to include this title page from a different old book I had because I thought it was really cute!

This is what the final book looked like. I only used about 20 pages because that's what was in my pad of paper, but you could make it as thick or thin as you want. I feel like this holds up for me because the paper I used was VERY thick, so the string doesn't cut through it. So, I'm not entirely sure how it would work with other paper. I also added this stencil with just a sharpie to the cover to give it a little something extra. 

While I was working in this journal, I hadn't decided what to do with the other old book yet. After finishing a page, I had all of this extra paint left over and I decided it would be silly to waste it, so I decided to use it up by painting the pages of the other old book. 

I didn't feel the need to cover the whole page, just the words, which as you can see are not entirely covered. I could use a white gel pen, calligraphy pen, paint pen, or sharpie on these pages to write, but I will probably end up using it as an art journal. 

Now every time I have extra paint I'll just paint a couple pages in this old book. I could also use it to just experiment with techniques or to get the right shade of color I'm looking for, or try out designs. 

Oh, and to keep the pages from sticking to each other while drying I put pieces of wax paper between them. I also ripped out about 70% of the pages in this book because once it's painted and once I add stuff to the pages while journaling the pages will be a lot thicker and I don't want the book to bulge. Also, a lot of pages is intimidating! 

This book had some interesting pages that I decided to leave in here and there.