Bon Jovi: Giving Vinyl Albums new life

This is pretty cool.

Old records get new life as handmade journals

By Theresa Hegel Staff

Katie Pietrak has been collecting vinyl records since she was a teenager.

The Franconia woman now has thousands of them neatly indexed and alphabetized in a makeshift shelving unit formed from stacked old chicken coops.

She likes the nostalgia factor and the high sound quality of vinyl.

“That’s how my parents listened to music,” she said. “It’s a link to the past.”

As her collection grew, however, Pietrak would find better quality copies to replace the scratched and beat-up records she’d originally purchased.

The more often this happened, the more she began to wonder what to do with the flawed vinyl she was replacing.

A longtime crafter who hates throwing things away, Pietrak decided to highlight the “cool artwork” on the albums and unique look of vinyl by transforming them into stylish blank journals.

“I did scrapbooking as a kid before it was cool,” Pietrak said. “I thought, ‘Let’s make them into books.’ “

After landing on the idea, Pietrak bought a stack of craft books to teach herself the art of bookbinding. She went through several prototypes — experimenting with a band saw and different shapes and sizes — before coming up with the final version.

The square journals feature a laser-cut and sanded vinyl record as the front cover and part of the album cover reinforced by thick paper on the back. The middle is filled with high-quality, unlined paper.

Once the journals were perfected, Pietrak realized she had a marketable item on her hands. She and her boyfriend, Vin Diec, decided to take her parents up on an offer to downsize. They sold their home in Morristown, N.J., Pietrak quit her job in corporate finance, and moved into her parents’ Franconia home.

This spring, Pietrak and Diec launched Vintage Vinyl Journals, selling the product online and to about 15 retail stores across the country. Locally, the journals are for sale at Clay Rat Studio in Souderton and Heart’s Desire in Skippack.

“We’re trying to see how fast and big the business grows,” Pietrak said. “We’re not really making money yet. We’re investing it back into the business to make it succeed and get bigger.”

Pietrak said she can handcraft between 25 and 40 journals a day. The rest of her time is spent on administrative tasks and trying to drum up the interest of more retailers. Her goal is to add at least one new store a week to the list that carries her product.

Most of the journals sell for $35. Premium journals — which feature coveted albums from artists such as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones — sell for $40 to $50.

Beatles journals are easily the biggest seller, but customers also like journals from Disney and other movie soundtracks. And Pietrak also gets plenty of custom requests: She recently finished two Bon Jovi journals for a client with very exacting specifications.

For vinyl enthusiasts who worry that she is destroying beloved collectibles, Pietrak has this reassurance: “Most of the stuff we use is scratched or unplayable. ... I have (The Beatles’) ‘White Album.’ I would never cut that. That’s like sacrilege.”

I love it when people re-purpose things like this. If you go to Etsy and to a lesser extent e-bay you see items like this.

The article doesn't show the Bon Jovi album she did, but her website does:
http://www.vintagevinyljournals.com/journals/rock/bon-jovi-new-jersey/

But before you think... Hmmm that might be really nice to put on my Christmas list.  For $34.99 it's a nice gift.  It's sold out.  But if you really want it go to their site and leave a note.