The Guy Books Series: Silver Swirls on Blue

A few months ago, I was contacted to do a book for someone's boyfriend. That deal fell through, but the idea stuck with me. More journals are woman-centered than man-centered. Shouldn't guys have as many options as we do when it comes to chronicling their thoughts?

While shopping at JoAnn's with my husband's cousin, I started keeping an eye out for "guy" fabrics. These proved more elusive than I thought they would be! Fabric that I originally thought would be a good fit because of its color would often have to much "froo-froo" on it and I'd have to start over again. I finally settled on a green batik, a blue with silver swirls, and a faded brown with red overtones.

I decided to start with the blue fabric first. I managed to get five covers out of that fat quarter. Then I had to rethink my strategy for paper. Unlined, colorful paper appeals more to women than it does to men for journaling. But artists love unlined paper, too, so I decided to keep one unlined. I did something new for two of the books and put in lined paper (harder to do than I originally thought!). I consulted with my husband, and he said a good idea would be to try graph paper. It was a pretty normal getting-in-over-my-head moment when I started that part of the project. I finally settled on carefully pulling pages from a graph paper pad and cutting them by hand. I also goofed in gluing the graph paper into one of my covers and had to scrap the book entirely (which made me sad).

But four of the books turned out great, so enjoy all the variety of pictures!