Mini Notebook

In less than 24 hours I will be "Setting Sail" at my church's women's retreat!  Yay!  Last May I was able to attend my first ever women's retreat with my sister in law and her church.  It was awesome. If you've never gone on a women's retreat with your church, I highly recommend trying it out.  It's just an amazing time of worship and connection and fun and rest and digging into the Word.  Well, at least that was the one I went to... :) But I've heard awesome things about my church's as well.

And since I am going to be gone for the weekend, my wonderful husband took our son and went to visit some relatives.  They left this morning, so this also gave me a few extra hours of ME time tonight.  I miss them, but I am "forcing" myself to enjoy the time for myself :).

Of course ME time wouldn't be complete without some crafting.  My original craft task for the evening was finishing a carry case/cover for my Bible.  However, I gave up after several things I wanted for it didn't work out... I will revisit someday but for now it's tabled.

So I ended up with a quick little Mini Notebook project so I have something to jot down notes, verses, prayer requests etc....

I started off with a very inexpensive little composition notebook and an awesome sheet of scrapbook paper I received from my brother in law & sister in law for Christmas.

I cut the 12x12 sheet not quite in half with my paper cutter.

Then I "wrapped" my notebook in it to get the fold lines.

I used a glue roller to adhere the paper to the notebook.  First the outside cover, then the inside cover and then the edges.

There was a little gap on the back cover, so I glued on some grosgrain ribbon to the back cover and it folds over to use as a place marker within the pages.

For the gap in the front, which was a little bigger, I decided to use my "All things are possible stamp" on a piece of card stock.  Since my stamp has two little insects (that I'm not a fan of, but it was a $1 stamp from Michael's and I loved the saying) I just put a bit of tape over the bee/fly and then took it off before I stamped the paper.  I sort of did a reverse stamp by setting the paper on top of the stamp and pressing down with one of my cling stamp bases.  

Then I had an idea to use a brad and some embroidery thread to create a way to keep the book closed.  I used my craft knife to cut a little slit in the cover, inserted the brad, tied the thread around/under the brad on one end, and knotted the loose end to prevent unraveling.  

  And the finished notebook!  I think it was the perfect pre- retreat craft for the evening!  And of course it would be really cute done in a bunch of my other papers too.  :)

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