Paper Bag Journals - Another success!

So - the Paper Bag Journals for Girls camp did take a little bit more preparation - the fantastic tutorial can be found here - at Burlap and Denim.  They really did do a fantastic job of explaining how to put this together.  I knew that I would be at "Girls Camp" though  - so I did a bit of the preparation at home.  I precut papers, folded bags, and even taped the ends of the twine that needed to be threaded through the bags.  The rest I left up to the girls and their creativity went totally out of control.  Here are a few pictures of our finished projects:

 I would recommend cutting out the word lists that are at Burlap and Denim on their printable sheets - as well as bring lots of embellishments - you never know what the girls are going to want to create when they get started.

some of our books were fat and thick - full of papers and ribbons and stickers - others were thin, with a few things here and there - and sparse - everyone is different.  There is no right or wrong way to do this craft.  Overall, I would say that it was very successful and one of the least expensive crafts that I put together (Mostly because I am an avid collector of scrapbook paper and I had plenty on hand that I could just cut up and let the girls use for their creative purposes).  Make sure that you print off the directions from Burlap and Denim!  It was a fantastic Tutorial!

If you do not feel like visiting their site - here are the full set of instructions - however, I am not going to copy over their PDF Files for you to print - you will have to create those on your own or visit their site to get those goodies:

  It is an inexpensive project and with a lot of prep work, goes very smooth in the woods.

Supplies (per journal):

• 3 lunch bags, folded and pre punched with 5 holes
• 22″ twine, taped on one end for easy threading
• scrapbook paper pre-cut to fit pages of the journal (16 total, 3 sizes)
• velum labels (printable below)
• testimony card for insert (printable below)
• 1 mini zip lock bag 2″X3 1/2″ for nature souvenirs insert
• 1 small envelope for letters insert
• pictures of Christ torn out from church magazines
• ribbons and embellishments
• glue stick
• scissors
• stapler

Before I bought any supplies, I dug through our closet and used anything we already had.  We didn’t need to buy any scrapbook paper, I just cut up what we had and made the most of it.   I used leftover ribbon scraps from other projects.  The twine was very inexpensive from Home Depot and we used it for other projects as well.

Construction:  To make a journal, fold three paper bags in half with some folded each way.  Take one with the clean sides out and use that as a cover with the other two nested inside.  Punch 5 holes down the folded side (this is difficult unless you have a really nice hole punch).  Lace the taped end of the twine from the top to the bottom and back up again as shown below (note: if you want a “binding” look, cut a piece of paper and match up the hole punches, glue it down and THEN lace).

Inserts:  Since there are three paper bag openings in one journal, I made three separate inserts for the girls to use (of course they could make up any other ones they wanted to add to them as well).

I had a “Testimony” card with a sheet they could write down their testimony (an activity we did in the woods) with a temple cards (we had on hand) on the back side.  They could attach a piece of ribbon as a tag to pull it out.

I also found mini zip-lock style bags at the craft store (I think $1 for 25?).  They could gather small pieces of nature from a hike or campsite to keep in there.

An envelope with a ribbon tag is a space for letters from home to be stored or letters from secret sisters.

Embellish!  This is where the girls creativity comes out.  I printed off labels for the different activities I knew we would be doing to help guide them as to what to put on the pages (printable found below).

Photos: You might notice this book has pictures in it…that turned out to be a fun surprise.  We made the journals on the second day.  I took tons of photos for the first two days of camp.  I had to go home for a day to my babies and then came back up for the last night.  While I was home, I printed the photos off and cut them with a paper cutter.  We passed around the photos in a zip-lock back and each girl was able to choose 6 to glue in to their journals.  When they got home, they already had something to show their mom’s and dad’s from their camp.  After we got back from camp we had another activity where the girls brought more photos from their cameras and other leaders photos that they could add to their journals.