Botanical Wax Paper Bag Journal

Hey everyone! I've been diving into the world of junk journals. Have you seen them? They are fantastic! I've even started designing tags, cards and journal kits for my Etsy shop.

Anyhoo, I was on Pinterest looking at, well.... everything, when I came across a "clear" junk journal. It was fabulous! Someone had taken clear pieces of thin plastic and suspended tiny objects (keys, coins, etc.) inside and then sewed around the edges. It was so cool!

I decided I wanted to make a "clear" journal, but I didn't have any clear plastic... at least none that would work for a journal. What I did have was a bunch of translucent wax paper bags... and tape. :) You can already see where I'm going with this.

I lined the paper bags up side-by-side (like book pages) and taped down the center, connecting each bag until they formed a book. The tops were cute, but I wanted a shorter book, so I cut them off to the size I wanted. This left me with open tops to each "page" that I could fill with found items! I used clear packing tape to cover the "spine" of my book. Using tape kept the book simple, clean and clear.

My daughter and I went on a walk. We're blessed to live on a lake near some woods, so we found plenty of beautiful flowers and leaves. But you could use keys or pretty scrapbooking tags, scraps of memorabilia like ticket stubs, or really just anything that is relatively flat to fill your pages.

What will you put in YOUR journal? :)

Make Your Own 221B Baker Bag: Sherlock Purse

Make Your Own Sherlock Bag
I've been working on several cool furniture projects for an upcoming Spring Market. Unfortunately,
most of those are still unfinished.

However, I did find time to finish one project, not furniture but something else I've wanted to do for a looooong time: a Sherlock Holmes purse!

I'm a bit of a geek, especially when it comes to books/movies, and I recently came across an Etsy shop that sells bags that look like Sherlock Holmes' door.

So cool! I wrote to the guy and asked him about them and found out they are just flat, two-dimensional pictures. There is no real hardware on the bags: no coolio door knocker, no numbers. I probably should have realized that right away, but I geeked out over it and thought maybe it had actual hardware included. Nope.

I decided in order to be truly cool, I needed a purse with actual hardware. Then, I remembered that Tim Holtz makes a mini lantern.

From Amazon




Thus was born my 221B Baker bag! I bought the bag at Goodwill. It seemed like a good size and had a nice, flat black back that made a perfect canvas for my "door." Then I found a black fabric belt to criss cross over the purse and create the illusion of panels intersecting. After much searching, I found a shop on Etsy that sells small metal numbers and letters. I painted them with gold acrylic, then did a light misting of black spray paint to make them look old and weathered. I also ordered a pendant pull on Etsy that resembled the actual door knocker from Sherlock.

I assembled it all by fastening the hardware on and sewing/gluing the belt to the purse. Finally, I tucked the battery pack to my lantern inside the purse pocket and allowed the lantern to hang outside the door. The final result is just awesome! At least for a geeky girl like me. :)