Sather

If you're looking for the perfect gift for a teen or pre-teen girl or female friend, then you might want to consider a handmade journal. Use these tips to get started, then use your own creativity to create a personalized work of art. These journals also make great birthday or graduation gifts.

To get started, pick out some pretty card stock for the cover, maybe a favorite color of the girl the journal is intended for. I used a paper cutter to cut the piece of paper in half. You should end up with two sheets of paper 4 x 5 .

Select the paper you will use for the inside pages of the journal. I chose about 50 sheets of unlined copy/printer paper and cut them in half.

Then you get to be creative and decorate the cover. You can look at my example photos for inspiration. For one I used decals used for scrapbooking and card making. I placed a floral border down the left side and used rubber stamps to stamp the girl's name vertically on a scrap of white card stock that I then glued to the right side of the cover.

On another cover I placed the girl's name horizontally on the top of the cover, also using rubber stamps to spell out her name. Behind the cardstock that the name was stamped on I glued a piece of mulberry paper (craft paper that is thin like tissue paper) that I had torn around the edges. To finish this journal I placed a large floral sticker in the center of the cover.

To bind the journal together, I used a comb binding machine. If you don't know someone who has one of these that you can borrow, you can go to a local office supply store like Office Max or Office Depot, and they will either let you do it yourself in their copy department, or they will do it for you for a small fee.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com