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Hi, my name is Katie Crooks.
I'm a public program coordinator here at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
and today for our craft project we are going to be making travel journals.
I have a couple of examples here.
Travel journals are great when you head out on the road or catch a flight somewhere;
you might want to sketch a picture of something that you saw,
you might take a picture and need somewhere to put it.
These little guys,
I've designed them with envelopes inside the cover so that you can stash away ticket stubs and receipts,
things that you might want to hold on to for mementos.
In addition, if you're not in the market for a travel journal, they can still be used very easily.
All you have to do is instead of decorating them with old maps like we're going to be doing today,
use decorative paper that better fits the theme for what you need.
Maybe you need a journal, so every time you try a new type of wine you can write it down.
So maybe something having to do with a vineyard might be a better decorative paper,
or if you're a cook and you want to keep recipes and things somewhere,
maybe something culinary on the outside.
Or even just something abstract and decorative could be really nice if you keep this in your purse, or in your car,
or at the office to jot down different notes.
So to get started today, let's gather together our materials.
I have some scratch paper.
I'm going to use this to make the pockets inside the cover to hold our ticket stubs and such.
I have some pages from an old atlas that is well over ten years old, so not really relevant anymore.
In the age of smartphones, paper maps seem to be going away.
I've cut up a variety of different cereal boxes, cracker boxes.
Anything that's made out of this thin cardboard will work really well--non-corrugated cardboard.
So I've got lots of different sizes, and you can cut it down to be as small or as big as you'd like.
I have some bits of scratch paper here that'll work really nicely for the pages.
You're going to need a button for a closure.
Some embroidery floss or a light weight yarn will work great for this wrap to hold your book together.
I also have an embroidery needle; it has a very large eye on it,
so threading it with this larger weight of string will work really well.
A couple of glue sticks, some scissors, a ruler, and a pencil.
All of these things put together will work really nicely,
and it's great that we're upcycling these boxes and these old maps--giving them a new life and a new purpose.
Much better than throwing them in the trash.
So to get started, what you're going to want to do is take your box.
One side of the box will have a decorative side to it that has the logo and brand of whatever the box used to hold.
I like to put that on the inside so that either I show a little bit of the cardboard and then my decorative paper,
or if I cover the whole thing with decorative paper, that bold design that companies use isn't going to show through the cover.
What you're going to want to do is you're going to cut this down so that it makes nice, straight lines.
You can use a ruler or eyeball it.
First, cut away the flaps to make a nice rectangle shape.
This one's going to make a pretty decent-sized book.
You can make it bigger or smaller.
Like I said, just depends on maybe how big your purse is or where you're going to keep this in your car.
Maybe your glove compartment's really full, so you want something small.
So just fold the two ends together to meet each other, push down,
and I like to use the dull edge of my scissors to just kind of make that crease really nice and tight.
So once you get your piece of cardboard and you've made a nice good crease on it,
go ahead and measure it on each side.
What you're going to want to do is make sure that the paper that you've cut down is a quarter of an inch shorter on each side
so that you have a bit of a border.
You can see how I've done it here.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
I've got a little extra cardboard on these sides as opposed to the top and the bottom,
but that will work nicely when I have my finished book.
Here, I'll pull out one of the finished ones here and show you what I'm talking about.
You'll see on the inside of this one, you don't want your pages to be bigger than your cover so that they extend on the outside.
So a little bit smaller makes it look nicer in the end.
For these books, I've been doing about five sheets of paper.
So you go ahead and count out those pieces of paper that you've measured and cut down.
If you cut them all at the same time, it's a lot easier than drawing individual lines on the same piece of paper.
Once you have your five pieces, go ahead and fold them in half... make a nice crease.
Now, I've already prepared one that's set to go.
You'll notice I put the logo side with the nutrition label and things--that's going to be on the inside of the book.
The regular colored cardboards going to be on the outside.
I've pre-folded these guys and stacked them up together.
I'm going to center them in the book.
Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my embroidery needle,
and I'm going to poke about five or six holes through the paper and through the cardboard to start.
It'll be much easier if those holes are already there before you begin threading.
I'm going to start with just the pieces of paper and center them inside my cardboard.
I'm going to re-poke through those holes again,
this time going through the cardboard,
trying to make sure that it goes through the spine so you don't have any stitches that are off-centered.
Go ahead and do that for each one,
and then once you've done that, you can begin sewing.
So I have that all set to go, and I've pre-loaded a needle.
I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to tie a knot on one end of it.
That knot's going to hold the yarn.
I start on the outside of the book, and I go in.
So find that hole that you originally poked and just bring it through like that.
You're going to go ahead and sew back and forth down the whole way.
I have one that I've already sewn.
Here, you'll notice that it looks like a continuous line.
That's because I sewed all the way down,
and then I reversed directions, sewed all the way up, and then I took the two ends and I tied them together.
When you get to this point, what you're going to want to do is put a cover on.
I like to put my decorative paper on first,
even if you're choosing not to extend the paper the whole way to the cover.
It's better just in case you don't want your button to be placed in kind of an awkward place.
So it's always easier to do the decorative paper first, then to sew on the button.
So for this, you just pick your different pieces of paper,
and you're going to want to eyeball some measurements.
I'm going to have this one cover the entire cover of the book.
I'm going to take my pencil--just make a little notation as to where the edge is,
and I think what I'm going to do is make it a little bigger because I can always trim around the edge when I get done.
I'm going to go ahead and cut this down,
and it'll be significantly longer.
At this point, go ahead and put glue over the entire part of the cover.
Take your paper, press it down,
and then what you're going to want to do--flip over the book and,
using your cardboard as a guideline, cut and trim the edges.
There we go.
So now your cover is set to go, and then you would do the other side with...
This piece of paper won't work,
so I have another section of the map here.
If you line it up just right, you might actually have one continuous picture or map set up to go.
At this point, I'm going to go ahead, though, and show you how to sew on the button for the closure.
For that part, I have another needle here, and you're going to want to measure it--
your string--
to make sure that it's going to go around your book a couple of times and have plenty of string to spare.
That should be really good.
I have some buttons here, so go ahead, and you can pre-poke your needle through.
Use your button to measure where the spots should be.
Just like when sewing the spine, if you pre-poke these holes, it'll make it a lot easier.
So it's all set and ready.
I'm going to have it come up through the back.
Go ahead and put the button on,
and pull it up like so.
So go back and forth, sewing the button,
and when you get done, you'll have a tail coming off.
I wrap it around the button a few times, sew the needle through, and then that's how you get the closure.
Whatever is left on your piece of string--you can cut it down if you need to.
Sometimes they're a little extra long.
You wrap around the journal and swirl around the button, and that's what creates your closure.
I always like to put a knot at the very end of the floss or yarn,
just to make sure it doesn't fray and that you end up having to shorten and cut your button.
So once this is set, the next part that you're going to want to do--and I have one set and ready for us here--
is to cover this extra space on the inside.
What I've done is I've made envelopes.
We have another video on our YouTube channel that shows how to make your own envelopes
if you don't own envelopes of the right size to just fit in here, so you can go ahead and look that up.
What you do is you create a small envelope or pocket, you glue it to the inside,
especially you're going to glue it over this little piece of fabric lump so that you never see those parts,
and it looks very seamlessly done.
Here I have a premade envelope ready to go.
All you would do is just put glue on the back of the envelope and press it down into the finished product here.
Then, it would be there, you can flip it open, put in whatever you need to, close it.
When the whole project is closed, you wrap it with that thread, twist it around the button,
and you have a completed travel journal.
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