Trader Joe's Laurel Anything Book

Today I finished an Anything Book that has been sitting on my workbench for several weeks. It's a commision and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

This is Laurel, an Anything Book made from a Trader Joe's shopping bag.

This is the first time I haven't used a recycled project package as the front cover. The front and back cover are made from a cereal box, but the box is only visible from the inside. The outside is cut from this lovely reusable grocery bag. This took a little bit of engineering to figure out, but I'm thrilled with the results.

The turquoise bow is made from the shopping bag handle.

Here's a close up of the cover showing the ring fringe and the crystal letter on the front. The book rings are almost a royal blue, and work perfectly with the peacock inspired color theme. Laurel contains more pages than most of my Anything Books, so I've used 1 1/2 inch rings. Laurel also has a turquoise book belt that isn't shown in the photos.

This is a small sample of fabric inserted into Laurel which adds great color and texture to this page.

This is the first time I've incorporated fabric into an Anything Book. When I spotted this fabric, I knew it had to be part of this lovely book. It looks like tooled leather, but it's not real leather.


A recycled business reply envelope is embellished with a used postage stamp and paper scraps.

 The peacock theme inspired the colors, but it also shows up in small ways as images. Here you can see a used postage stam with a peacock on a recycled business reply envelope.


The horizontal layout of Laurel lets me layer materials between the full-size pages.

Laurel is set up for use as a smash book style Anything Book. There are no special journaling sections. Between the full-size pages, there are many different sized materials that create layers. Often, when you turn something over, you get a surprise because there is something unexpected waiting to be discovered underneath.


The ring fringe accents the color scheme of the book and sets the tone for the contents.

Laurel contains more types of materials than the other Anything Books. Partly, this is because it's larger (both in page size and page count) than the others. Partly, this is because I'm doing more experimenting with materials. And partly this is because I work with people to define commission pieces that closely fit their personality and journaling needs.

I hope you have enjoyed this peek inside Laurel. You can see my Anything Books for sale in my Etsy shop, and you can contact me there to make a commision piece for you or a loved one.