Pirate Journal

For Christmas, I decided to make a journal for my writing-crazy, pirate-loving friend. These pictures I didn't take myself, because these were some of the many pictures that disappeared when I first arrived in Colorado. Luckily, my friend was kind enough to take these pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

This is the front cover of the journal. The cover is made of embossed leather (I had bought it embossed). It is held closed by a string of leather which goes around the metal skull that i had attached to the cover. If you look closely to the picture, you can see that there are lighter streaks in the leather. This is because it was bent when I first bought the piece. It took a couple of nights to flatten it. Fortunately, the lighter lines adds to the aged, used, grungy, pirate look. Great success!

Here is the inside of the cover. On the leather, I glued an old map that I found online and scraps of fabric. I think it turned out pretty well. I put this leather journal together in a hurry because at the time, my friend was a few minutes away from my house. When she unwrapped her journal, we both still smelled the glue. Hopefully it's still holding up. To the right, I printed out a page that says, "Tara's pirate Log". It looks awesome. Many people thought I wrote that on the page. Thanks for the compliment, but no. Just some random, bitchin' text I found on the computer.

Here is a close up on the pages. At first, I tea-dyed the pages. Unfortunately, the tea wasn't too dark, no matter how much I steeped and added more tea to the mixture. Then I switched to coffee. I think coffee turned out a lot better that I thought it would. An awesome pirate journal indeed.

Last but not least, here is the back inside cover. It is, yet again, a picture of a map and some fabric. I did a couple of stitches to keep this book intact; one of them being a stab stitch to the portfolios, the other the long stitch. This is one of the first "professional" leather journals I have done, and I very much impressed myself.