River Song's Journal

So, I'm also a big Doctor Who fan.  Big.  I mean, I'm completely in love.  I cry regularly that the Doctor hasn't shown up yet to take me travelling with him.   The tenth Doctor is my favorite, how can you not love David Tennant?

Seriously, no human being has the right to be that cute.

Anyways, one of his on again off again companions is miss Queen of the Badasses, River Song.  She is awesome.  and she also does quite a bit of time travelling on her own.  And she and the Doctor are travelling in opposite directions on eachother's timeline.  Very confusing. They never know where the other one is, and what the other one has done.

As a result, River carries around a rather unique journal that she keeps track with, so that when she meets up with the Doctor, they can compare notes, figure out where they're at and know what they can talk about without causing spoilers.  Time travel and foreknowledge and all that jazz. 

 

Based on my previous posts, I'm assuming you see where I'm going with this.  I found a really good tutorial online for how to make this journal. 

Right here: http://storybooksong.tumblr.com/post/11131545977

And I WANTED it. 

It just so happened that weekend before last Caleb and Zach went out of town for a Grand Prix tournament for Magic.  Marissa and I got ditched.  Aaron and Amanda went too, so that meant I got to be the babysitter.  Luckily, we did get Caleb's parents to agree to take the girls one night so that I could have one night where I could do whatever I wanted.  And I suggested to Marissa that we do this.  she is also a big Doctor Who fan, we became fans together, watching it on Netflix.  She liked this plan. 

So, Corey had been spending a few days at our house because of a long weekend off of school.  He has just started Doctor Who, so he didn't know River yet, but he likes the show.  Friday afternoon I took Shannon and Eloise to Caldwell, and hit the craft store, leaving Corey happily playing Skyrim.  I ended up spending about $30 for the supplies to make two journals.  Marissa had offered to take me out to dinner that night, so I just paid for the supplies.  the journals were about $7 each, and then at the Hobby Lobby I found a big bag of scrap leather for $7.  IN TARDIS BLUE.  I about had a heart attack when I found affordable leather in the right color.  I was planning to paint over it anyways, but it was so much better to have the right color to begin with.  I didn't learn how much better until later.  I bought paint and glue as well. 

Anyways, that night we went to Chili's for dinner, Corey came too, and then we went to Hastings and rented Fright Night, because David Tennant is in it, and we hadn't seen it.  At home we watched a few episodes of Doctor Who first- Corey was right at the end of the first season, so he didn't really know David Tennant yet, so we just picked up where he was.  Plus the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston is very good, and David Tennant's first episode is my favorite.  I didn't mind.  I made margaritas and then we put in Fright Night and made these:

 Mine's the one with the bigger lines.  I feel we did a pretty good job.  Cutting the leather was AWFUL.  we used scissors and x-acto knives.  I found a spot on the base of my thumb where if it gets pushed on makes my whole thumb tingle like it's asleep.  and I hit it so hard my thumb was numb for two days.  I also bruised my hnd in various ways and had sore muscles from how hard I'd had to work to cut the leather.  We got out pumice stones and used those to rough the books up to make them look more worn- River's journal has clearly had the crap kiced out of it.  We scraped at the leather, the corners, the edges of the pages, everything.  I made some tea and mixed some cocoa in, which we sponged over the edges of the pages to make them look yellowed and older.  Marissa plans to just use hers for decoration, so she did a more accurate spine, which you can't really see.  When we were gluing the leather we realized really fast that stiff cheap leather would not allow the spine to bend if we did the correct looking spine.  Mine was originally an inverse of hers, with just small pieces glued on so I could actually use mine, but in the end I didn't like it.  I went back to the Hobby Lobby and got a small piece of soft, nicer leather and redid the spine so it looks much better.  It was then that I learned how good the blue leather was.  the new stuff I got was brown, and was impossible to rough up at all, because it just scraped the paint off, which I then had to repaint, which would smooth out the roughing.  I managed to get it a little beat up, but it wasn't easy.  It would have been a pain in the ASS to do that if all the leather had been a different color. 

Anyways, there they are.  and I love it.  I don't know what I'm going to write in mine, I'm terrible with journals.  But I'm gonna come up with something.