Altered Shopping Bag Turns Art Journal

In my previous post, I mentioned how I purchased an adorable shopping bag. I've never purchased a shopping bag "just because", but this time I did. I thought about what to do with it for a few days and this is what I came up with...

I turned it into a hybrid midori - art journal. Below are lots of pictures of how I made this. It started with this little shopping bag.

Next, I deconstructed it. Separating the sides.

And separating the bottom.

I cut along the sides.

Resulting in two pieces.

 Fold in the sides and glue into the inside cover.

Cut about half of the bottom flap off from the bottom side.

Now, turn bottom fold up and cut about half of the flap.

Glue down the bottom flaps onto each side.

Glue down the bottom flaps on top of each other, making the spine.

I sewed around the spine and added some of the extra shopping bag pieces around the center.

 Inside view.

I cut a piece of card stock for the inside covers.

I covered the card stock with coordinating paper.

I clipped the corners of the coordinating paper at a diagonal and glued the sides down. Next, I glued them onto the front and back covers.

I punched some holes at the top and bottom of the spine and threaded the holes with some elastic.

 The elastic will hold my inside journal pages.

 Here are some of my inside pages.

I recycled an old calendar and cut up the pages and trimmed off the edges.

And folded the calendar pages in half. I also added some plain white mixed media paper in between.

Then I added a few embellishments to get the pages started.

I can't wait to start filling up my art journal and look for more fun small shopping bags!