Late Night Boutique: Very Awesome Journal -- Part 1

Greetings subscribers, regular viewers, casual readers, and drop-ins. My name is Timmy Bauer; I'm Gabriele's son. She's allowing me to write this next post because this latest project was a collaborative effort (and by collaborative, I mean that it was an idea that I had that I would never have been able to accomplish to the degree of awesomeness that it now is without her expertise).

For those of you that haven't already seen (aka, those of you that are blind), my mom is a wizard with a sewing machine. She'd never say that about herself, and I'm hoping that this statement doesn't get removed by her when she reads this before publishing. Well, she is; and I knew that I would want/need her help for what I wanted to do.

How this project got started is, well, ever since I was 18 (three long years ago) I started writing in journals. Although I used the term journal somewhat loosely on the beginning. The first one was just one of those compact notebooks you use for school. But it worked. It's surprising what a stabilizing force a journal can be in a person's life. There's something I realized over the years though, and that's that--shallow as this may sound--the way the journal is put together (how it feels, what it looks like, etc.) does have an influence on the kind of writing that goes into it. The majority of my intimate thoughts and struggles are found in sturdy, but soft binding that clasps shut. I don't know why it works that way, but it has.

Well I just ran out of pages on my old, use-torn journal, and was having a really hard time finding a new one (for cheap... I'm a college student). So I decided to make one. My girlfriend helped by printing the pages (it is surprisingly impossible to find paper with vertical lines instead of horizontal). I figured out a really good way to bind the pages together (basically, some folding in half, some hot glue, staples, and a strip of fabric), but I needed help with the cover. That's where my mom comes in.

We started with some old leather from a pair of chaps that doesn't fit me anymore (I ride horses... and a motorcycle). I pulled out the stitching and basically took the whole thing apart. Then we worked on piecing together the design that I wanted. My mom won't say this, but she's incredibly good at improvising a pattern in the moment.