I thought I’d take the opportunity to take this week to talk about things and give things to all my blog readers (lol, all two of you Rachael and Katie 😉 ) Today will be part one of my ramblings on journals 🙂 It’s what gave me the idea when I was doing my personal blog. I wanted to keep it separate from my photography hobby blog and giving that the subdomain “blog” I chose “journal” for my personal blog.
This is my very first journal, aged 11 years:
It did have a lock on it and you could at one time back when I was 11, close it up but over the years I used it I began putting things in it and it would no longer close properly.
I also had horrific 11 year old writing and mainly talked about teddy bears and what I called them lol.
and my random stickers – back when the original 90210 was on! I kid you not, I even have a sticker of MC Hammer in there – don’t ask me why!
Then came my awesome “fluffy” journal, which still locks and I still have the key hidden away in my secret hiding place even after all these years and moving.
Filled with Hanson goodness 🙂
From there, it was time for me to move on from the old lockable journals. I ended up using notepads only because I had more space to write. The lockable journals were awesome and I could take them wherever I went but it also meant there wasn’t a lot of room to write in and I wanted to get a bit more serious about my journal writing, and I even had special notepads for my holidays.
I did have a blast filling them up with things to keep us entertained on the flight – I wrote quizzes and such in the back 🙂 not to mention the fun I had decorating the first page!
It’s so funny to read back over some things, like this gem about a group of guys on our flight, who later would become great friends of ours during our holiday:
But alas, the notepads, although I was on the right track, just wasn’t sturdy enough for me. Queue hardback books:
These were just right, and I could stash them away in my bag without them getting beaten up. I was on the right track!
Finally, the journals I use now all came about while at UKScrappers. There was a journal swap going on and I decided to take part as I needed a new journal soon anyway and I thought it sounded fun 🙂
The middle journal in this picture was the journal I received from the swap and it completely changed the way I journalled. There were no lines in the book… The pages were different colours… It was so beautifully decorated and had cute charms attached to ribbon. This was such a beautiful and wonderful gift – so much love and attention went into it so it was PERFECT for my personal journal entries. I would never write in any of the books I had chosen again.
I took care with every entry I wrote in that book, and I treasure it a lot, and was so so sad when I filled it up.
I then started to buy Daler-Rowney artist books. The pages were acid free to protect my photos, it was hard backed and just perfect for decorating. The pages would be awesome for any doodles I would do in them (as I did in my swap journal) and there were no lines to restrict what I wanted to do in them. I learned to write a little straighter during my time with my swap journal, and the other two books you see in the picture are ones I decorated. The blue and white on the left first (complete with suede effect paper on the spine) and the purple one after (complete with string tie closure)
Tomorrow, I will write about what I journal about and a couple of helpful things I’ve found along the way 🙂
Journal 