Altered Notebook using Grunge Rose and Pearlized Stamping.

Last night I was searching around for ideas on altering a stardard (college rule) Mead notebook for my daughter Caitlin (a journalist major at MSU) to have a place to jot down her ideas and thoughts.  I was delighted with how this project turned out.  She was too!

For the Grunge Rose I got online and found a fantastic tutorial in two parts by Creations with Christina (I love her tutorials as they are always clear and concise!).  You can find part one of her tutorial here and part two here.  I didn't have any Hodge Podge (GASP...sputter) to apply to the back of the rose as Christina's tutorial indicated, so instead I used my Scotch Quick Drying Adhesive, which worked very well as I did not have any trouble curling the petals of the flower without the paper tearing.

I straightened the end of the spiral and removed the cover of the notebook.  I then covered it with the patterned paper (outside and inside) and cut holes through the paper that matched the cover using my Crop-o-dile.  Then I wound the spiral ring back onto the notebook pages and put it back together to finish decorating. There are lots of tutorials online that show this technique for "unscrewing" the wire, I can't remember which one I used, but here is one technique by Kim M. Bayne that might be useful to you.  She actually replaces the cover of the notebook (I didn't do that, just covered it with paper).

I also used a stamping technique I learned from a tutorial posted on Jennifer McGuire's blog.  She is one of my favorite designers and I love the way she uses Hero Arts products in such fantastic ways! For this project I used the (new 2010) Silhouette Grass stamp from Hero Arts, Perfect Pearls and Distress Inks by Tim Holtz (I heart Tim Holtz!).  I also used a Stampin Up background stamp featuring musical notes that I bought off Ebay (I assume it is a retired stamp).  The paper I used for this project is from My Mind's Eye (Totally Girl), which is one of my favorite paper packs right now and I got it half off at Michael's.  Got to love a really good sale!

I also used Papertrey Ink's Take Note stamp set (this is one of my all time favorite stamp sets right now - so many fun stamps for altered projects!). I stamped the word with Walnut Distress Ink and then embossed with clear embossing powder. Then I tied it up with some pretty pink ribbon I bought at Wal-mart and presented it to my daughter!  Now my other two daughters want one too and I look forward to making them as this one was so much fun to put together using all these new techniques I learned on line.... by golly I just LOVE the internet!