Cindy's Creative Journey: Turning a FSJ Mini Book into a Journal Step by Step Part 2 Creating a Signature by Cindy Bristow

Turning a FSJ Mini Book into a Journal Step by Step

Part 2 Creating a Signature

by Cindy Bristow

Howdy!

Today's Step by Step is on how to create the Signature in your Journal. A signature is a set of pages in your journal. All books are created with signatures, so if you open any book up, you will be able to see a set of papers that you can tell are grouped together in a signature. Our Journal will only have one signature in it because we already have other pages built in to it.

I have include affiliate links in this post, so if you click on them, purchase the item, I get a small commission from the company.

Ok, so at the end of step one, I gave you some homework, remember when I told you to start thinking about what the theme of your Journal was going to be? I still don't have a full theme picked out but I did pick out the color scheme of my Journal.

I chose to go with creams, pinks, browns and greys. It's a pretty neutral pallet and one that I enjoy using. I use a mixture of 80 lb cardstock and thin scrapbook paper. I do this so that the heavier cardstock supports the thinner patterned paper. I like to use scrapbook paper that is only printed on one side so that you have places to journal in your book. I grabbed 3 sheets of solid colored cardstock, (2) creams and a pink one. I also grabbed 4 sheets of single sided patterned paper. Once you have chosen your papers, cut them down to 8" x 11". You can save those 1/2" strips to stamp words on if you like. As you can see from my picture, I have already coffee stained my papers.

The next thing you do is fold your papers in half to make each page measure 8" x 5 1/2". The best way to do this is to carefully match the edges and hold them in place with one hand and place the tip of your Bone Folder in the middle of the folded part and crease from the middle out. Repeat this process with all of your paper pieces.

Now you have 7 sheets to put into your signature.

Our next step is to grab your Mini Book and open it up to the center. We are going to use the holes that already exist in the book to add our signature to the Journal. I always grab one of the pieces of 80 lb cardstock to use as my guide.

Carefully place the center of your cardstock in the center of the Mini Book, hold it in place and flip the book over. Now, using a pencil, mark your cardstock through the holes.

After you have marked you holes, you need to punch them out. I like using this Press Punch to do this step because you can use it anywhere on a page. Most hole punches won't reach in this far.

After you have punched all of your holes, it's time to reinforce them. I reinforce all of the wholes so that you don't have to worry about the paper ripping. I use this package that I grabbed at Walmart. Before I stick them on my paper, I ink them up using my Vintage Photo ink pad. I tend to ink up a few sheets at a time so they are ready to use.

Make sure you reinforce both sides of every sheet of paper.

At this point I put my papers in order, a patterned piece and then a plain cardstock piece. Now it is time to put a temporary bind onto my signature so that I can take it apart to work on the pages. I use a piece of twine and tie my signature together.