My new daily art journal : Paper & Stitch

As you saw in my last calendar post, I reached the end of my watercolour journal and had to think about what I'm going to use next.
I have the large (page size 11 3/8 x 8 1/4 inches) sized Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions journal which I bought with some Christmas money last December. 

You might remember this was a contender last time I changed journals. I had a couple of hesitations...
1) I have been finding my Full Tilt Boogie journal a challenge to fill because of the number of pages it has. My interest was waning in my Watercolour Journal by the end (I filled 39 pages in that). I have been thinking I would like to work in journals with less pages so I can focus on one kind of technique/theme - explore it, and then move to the next great idea...I am easily distracted! It's also good for your creative muscle to try different surfaces/sizes of paper/using different materials in your journaling.
2) I am seriously considering joining Life Book 2015 which begins January 1st and I'm thinking this would be a cool journal to use for that project - its pages are quite large and that envelope in the front could contain any notes I want to keep. Life Book lasts for a whole year so I should have ample opportunity to fill it. I think I've convinced myself that's the purpose for this journal!
So back to other options for my calendar journaling. I wondered about altering a book. I still love my December Daily from last year 

I really like the style of pages - a mix of words, paper, photos...

I was also very mindful of this :

Then I saw this sitting on the shelf and it all came together

I started this journal back in 2011 - read more about those beginnings HERE. In summary of that post, I found a photo album with paper pages. I removed the pages, decided I would add some watercolour sheets to the album as well, and started collaging. My intention then was to make "something pretty - collagey - papery - but also some stitch". I really enjoyed the collage, and did a bit of stitch on a couple of pages but then I got sidetracked by a number of other projects and the initial dozen pages I made just sat. 

Hand stitching on this one

When I pulled them out again, I still loved the collages, and thought they would make a good base for my project. Had to make a few changes first - these collages were done on double spreads to be folded into signatures. I want the freedom to work on individual pages and bind them later, without having to work out their order first, so I cut them all in half. Second change was that my initial collages were backed onto each other - that means I can't easily add stitch to those I've started. Luckily, I hadn't used very good glue, and I was able to peel all my pages apart!

So now I have piles of blank paper to add collage and stitch to as the mood takes me, and my initial collages pulled apart ready to have more stitch and other additions

And a cover that looked like this

and is now bare again waiting to be transformed into a cover that ties in with the whole project. I often wait until the end before I make my cover as you've seen here. This has got to be rather a long post, so I'll just share my first page that was made new for this project - click on the photo to see the machine-stitched details

I incorporated a copy of my desk reminder as a focus for this new project, and stitched all the elements before gluing this inside the front cover.

Next time I'll share some of the original pages now finished as part of this journal.