We are so very much enjoying our Time Travelers New World Explorers projects! This week we studied Brendan the Navigator, Leif Eriksson and Christopher Columbus. We’ve been making journals for our Adventurer Logs. What a fun project! Using an old bed sheet, pieces of cardboard, glue, scissors, copy paper, a coffee bath and some embroidery thread you can make a really cool journal.
First we stained our copy paper in a coffee bath and then hung them over the sink to dry. We used a blow dryer to get the job done quicker and the more wrinkly the paper, the better they turned out. This part was a bit messy… but fun!
Next we covered pieces of cardboard with scraps of an old sheet to make the cover. We just cut the fabric to fit the outer cover with a little overlap to the inside. Then we cut another piece of fabric and glued it down on the inside covering the raw edges of the first piece. The glue seeps through so you will need to protect your work surface. We just laid ours on a plastic shopping bag. Once they were hardened enough to stand on end I placed them in a window ledge to dry in the sun. *I completely forgot to take pics of this process so if you have questions just leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to describe it better.*
After this is all dry, you want to take your embroidery thread and a decent sized needle to sew the pages to the cover. I used a piercing tool to poke the holes before the sewing and this made it much easier for the kids.
It was a little hard pushing that needle all the way through…
But we finally made it to the ends.
At the ends, we just tied knots between the last two stitches. Ta da!! Nifty cool handmade journals!
Definitely check into the New World Explorers CD or any of the others in the Time Travelers series.
Sara O’