Handmade: A Lovely Daybook

One of my favorite things in the world  is the creation of something handmade.... and made of paper. Let it be regular books for reading, the fun and fabulous pages of a Smash* book, or a card that says hello. If it's made of paper, and cute or pretty, I love it! I know there are many people out there like me who share this same "addiction" ;) There is just something special about paper, with all of it's endless potential, handmade into something beautiful, like a book.

I've been making my own Daybooks for almost 6 months now. [I provided a link for anyone curious about what a Daybook is. It's coming from the blog of my gorgeous Smashaholic* sister, Cathy Vee. She does fabulous things with paper! And she is THE Paper Addict, after all. Check out her Shop.] Being a Smash*er has allowed me to meet some wonderful people, and it's the reason I got into Daybooking.... Well that and the girls from my group, Smash*aholics. They are enablers ;-)

I'll be going over the process I use to make my Daybooks in a later post. Today I'm just focusing on introducing the "Lovely" February Daily Daybook I made to celebrate The Month of Love. This is a special book that I had so much fun putting together. I'm using it to document our 14th Valentine Month together. But there's been so much going on with the blog and life in general,  that I've fallen behind on my days. After I get these pics up, I have lots of catching up to do....

What do you guys think of it? This is actually the first daybook I made for myself that has a Kraft cardstock cover with a transparency. All of my personal handmade books have covers made from fun file folders. (Check them out here.) Funny thing about all of my Valentine supplies is that I ordered this stuff months before even thinking about using it for Valentine's Day. My stash of supplies is always chocked full of "Love." It's one of my favorite subjects that I use year-round. So it just made sense to dig through my whole stash and add whatever I could find that would work with my new stuff.

Supplies Used:

8.5x11" Kraft Cardstock - The Cover
Half of a 12x12 Fancy Pants Transparency
Homemade Glimmer Mist in Pink
A Variety of Pretty Patterned Paper
Jillybean Soup Twine - Pink/White
Charms
Pink Chipboard Thickers and Tiny Alphas
Dymo Label Maker
Heidi Swapp Roller Date Stamp
Various Embellishments
Grosgrain Ribbon
Free Printables

Figuring out how I wanted to layout my cover is always the hardest thing about my books. I designed this one, keeping in mind that transparencies are see through. I had to figure out a clever, but cute way to cover both sides of that sheet. I've added more details to the cover since this pic was taken, and I love the way it turned out!

Be sure to check back this weekend to see the progress I've made in my book. Planning on showing you the inside if I get caught up!

[You can now see Days 1 to 14 of my Feb. Daybook here.]

Here is a glimpse of some of the Free Printables and Supplies I'll be using to document this month. Quite the collection....

*You can find all of those fun Printables on either My "Smash* & PL" or "Printables/Templates" Pinboards on Pinterest.

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