Beauty Arise! Lunch Bag Journals

Calli and I are so excited to be hosting a chapter of Beauty Arise, 

a ministry to women all over the world 

through YWAM LA, here in our home for Calli and her friends!

What a fantastic community of women we are joining and learning under!

Tomorrow fifteen girls hungry for God and community will literally be climbing over one another in our cozy little home and I couldn't be happier! 

These young ladies will know that they are

valued, they are loved and they are beautiful!

Calli and I wanted the girls to have journals 

for everyone to decorate but after a quick jaunt through the craft store 

we decided to make our own! 

Calli and I wanted to have some samples for "how-to" as well as inspiration. 

Here is a sneak peak of our Lunch Bag Journals

that the ladies will spend time making and embellishing over the 

next six weeks.

Calli's journal is so cute!

We decided to protect the table with pads and then covered them with packing paper so

that way we could write inspiring messages on it for the girls 

as well as make templates for how long to make ribbons for the bindings. That table spread is covered with glue, scissors, string, hole punch, pretty paper, paper clips and stickers.

We had most of these things in the craft room and the rest I picked up without spending much at all.

Table laid out with supplies.

To make: 

1)Take a stack of lunch bags and fold down the middle together. No particular order.

2)Punch a few holes in the fold.

3)We tied string with bows for the binding, but you could use duck tape, metal rings, ribbon or even staples. The fun thing about these journals is that they need not be perfect.

4) Go crazy! No rules. Just make it function the way you like!

The other genius thing about lunch bag books, not just that they are cheap, is that they make lots of little pockets on their own.

We made tabs for the pockets for the 6 weeks we will study together.

Mine is a little crazy of course.

We also folded little pockets and glued the sides for things like: notes, encouraging words, prayers and pictures. I'll be taking a portrait of each young lady, getting cheap wallets from Costco so that the girls can keep them in there. They can write their phone numbers and instagram info on the back and remember to pray for each other as they start high school in the fall.

Soon it will be stuffed with notes and fun things!

Tomorrow there will be 15 girls putting little touches on these. Hopefully each week the ladies will bring special things from home to embellish their journals.

All of those lunch bags are cheap!

This craft will work for a youth groups, club meetings, birthday parties, camp workshops, almost anything you can dream up. It also makes a fun book for birthday gifts, vacation memories or a memory book just for a special event.