While not at all necessary, at some point you might find yourself wishing your art journal had a pocket or two. There are tons of different ways to do this, and as with everything else in art journaling: none of them are wrong! One of the easiest ways to add a pocket, in my opinion, is to sew two pages together.
Start by cutting one page a little shorter than the other. This isn't really necessary, but I like being able to more easily get things out of my pockets, so having the front of the pocket shorter than the back helps.
Next, decide how you will join your pages together. Glue and tape will also work, but I decided to go with a sewn pocket. To make it easier to stitch together, I used a small hole punch to pre-punch holes. I could have sewn without pre-punching as well, but this helps to not tear my pages and weaken the pocket.
I used an embroidery floss rather than thread to make a sturdier connection. Just weave it through the holes, and knot off both ends.
The finished pocket. If you like the look of the thread wrapping around the outside of the pages rather than being in straight stitches, feel free! There is no wrong way to make your art journal.
I decided to cover the back of my stitches with washi tape. It gives the back of my pocket a nice border and covers my knots and stitches. You would never know the front of the page had a pocket sewn in.
Another great pocket method is gluing envelopes onto your pages. You could use the tutorials I have here or here to try making your own, or simply buy envelopes in any color or style you like and glue them on to your pages. I sometimes add a photo corner onto my envelope to help hold it shut, or you could make a button closure like I do in my gift card envelope tutorial.
If you aren't quite sure what you would put in your pockets, here is a list of things that I have filled mine up with in the past:
Recipe cards, or recipe pages torn from magazines
Paint chips
Leaves and pressed flowers
fabric scraps
needle and thread
paper with quotes on it
photographs
stencils
or maybe one of my favorite little extras: Stickers
I got these little beauties from a Sanrio store several years ago. I think the Little Red Riding Hood theme is what draw me to them, I just love it.
What are you going to fill your pockets with?
Thankyou, what a good idea, to stitch a pocket into an album. It has given me a lot of ideas for further use of hand sewing in our albums. Cross stitch, blanket stitch or even thread another colour through the backside of the stitches on the pocket giving a lovey effect to that page.
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