Getting Smashed

Caught your eye with that one, huh?  Sorry, not that kind of smashed.....the journal kind.  Smash journals seem to be all over the place, and even my round robin journal group is getting into the act.  We'll be sending ours out in the fall, but in the mean while, I managed to acquire a second one (blame those blasted deal of the day sites) and decided to use it as my travel journal on the upcoming (yea!!) Tim Holtz cruise.   It's perfect for note taking, big enough to add photos, ATCs, and all the ephemera you collect on a vacation.  But.....I wasn't really in love with the covers.  This is what it looked like straight out of the bag:

I thought the red was too.....well, red.  And the kraft colored cover is OK, but kind of blah.  And I don't feel the need to walk around as a Smash Book adverstisement, so the logo had to go.  The design on the cover is not printed, by the way.  It is embossed.  Now that, I thought was cool.

 

An hour or so later, after applying many layers of ink and paint and torn up paper, and stencils and stamps...... this is what the cover looks like now:

 

 

Definitely more "me," and I'm happy.  I copied the cover of our class schedule from the cruise documents Scrapmap sent me, and that is now the "title" of my journal.

 

The back cover is similar to the front:

 

And yes, in case you were wondering, I did also change the color of the elastic that holds the journaling pen/gluestick.  I used black distress stain on that....and on the fabric spine of the book.  Works wonders.  Yes, I know I am a little obsessive about such things.  Don't get me wrong, I do love the color red, but not on this journal.  And if you're wondering why then, did I buy a red smash book, the answer is......every other color was out of stock that day.  I did mention they are wildly popular.