I used to work in the Young Women (YW) organization in my church. I miss them greatly! This year, B’s cousin, Trish was the Camp Director for the YW and asked me for any fun ideas for camp. (Ok, I am sooo not a camper… B teases me that my idea of camping is Motel 6.)

SO anyway… I thought it would be fun to make little mini journals for the girls to have at camp. These would fit in their pockets and would be the perfect size for squirreling away private thoughts.. Trish chose the theme “Celebrate” for this years camp. Originally I had just the initial of each girl, but then decided to write their names when I realized that there were 5 C’s and 6 K’s… I didn’t want Cari opening up Christina’s and Keely opening up Kelly’s journal.

These were really simple to make and the activity went really well with all 23 girls and leaders.
We started with 4.5″x3.5″ mini composition books. You can find these REALLY cheap right now. I think I bought a grundle of them last year at Walgreens for 10/$1.00 or something. I pre-cut all the pieces and pre-stamped the spines and initials for each girl prior to assembly on Thursday morning. I also pre-assembled the initials on the chocolate mount paper.

We random stamped the white pieces of paper for the front with the set “Celebrate” by CTMH in Chocolate, Sweet Leaf, and Crystal Blue ink and then assembled the journals by adhering everything to the outside of the mini comp books with tape adhesive. (Do not use glue sticks if you want it to stay together.) The stamp with all the dots in the upper left hand corner was once ONE solid stamp… one of the beauties of acrylic… I cut apart all the rings and made several stamps out of the one.)

We glued the ribbon (book mark) down inside the spine, between the spine of the book and the stamped paper spine. I went around and stamped “Celebrate” on each journal.. the word was rather long and the journals rather small, so I had to bend the stamp to fit. (Gotta love CLEAR acrylic stamps!!) Finally we adhered the buttons on with Glue Dots and pulled the ribbon through a button.

Totally fun to make and totally easy!