I had a glitch with my camera (I shouldn't blame the cable loan, should I?) and had trouble downloading my photos, but I think it's squared away. This is Bessie drying from when I glued her together.
Right now the outside doesn't look any different since I didn't cut it apart, just took the insides out and substituted mine. I meant to start in it right away, but I had forgotten about the IFJM imperative. I'm churning through another purchased journal for that. Very productive, is my lady.
You may be able to tell from this picture that I did my signatures a little different this time. I added skinny pages that I plan to glue onto. I often don't want to bring a book along with me, so I have single sheets cut to the size to fit into this. I can slip them into my bag and take them along with me and then stick them in as I go along. I cut down scrapbook paper to hold the spine in the correct width so when I add pages the book shouldn't bulge.
I'm hoping it will open flat. I like to work across the spread when I can. This will be a mental challenge for me, since I'm pretty cheap on paper normally. But once I heard someone talking about quilt fabric and it has stuck with me. She said, if I'm going to spend potentially hundreds of hours (for a fancy hand quilted or appliquéd quilt) I'm not going to use discount fabric. I know my journals aren't heirloom, but I still want to feel good about them - to enjoy the feel of them as much as anything. I do actually like to look back at them when I'm done. So this will be the one where I try out more expensive paper. I can do this, right?