September 2, 2022

Today's post introduces your journal prompts.  You will notice on the sidebar the Words for the Month, the Question for the Week and the Thought for the Day.  You are invited to journal using these prompts in whatever way you feel about them.  

Each week there will be a new question and each weekday there will be a new thought related to the question.

Making your own journal is something that I have written about previously and will focus on each Monday.  You can start making your journal with very little investment.

Some supplies you will need include paper.  I usually use cardstock or scrapbook paper, but I have also used regular bond paper.  For regular bond, I may glue two sheets together which brings me to the topic of glue.  (By the way, if you have an ink jet printer with color, you can download free digital scrapbook paper.  Or, for very little money ($.99 to $3.00) you can purchase digital scrapbook paper in a vast veriaty of themes.  Check out Etsy.)

I use three types of glue.  First, to glue sheets together or to add a sheet on a full page, I use 'Elmers Stick glue Adhere A Plus De Surface' which is a purple glue that dries clear.  Second, to add ephemera (small decorative pieces) to a page or tag, I use 'Elmers Craft Bond' stick glue which is a clear glue.  And Third, to add a pocket or for other places that need strength, I use a tacky glue.

Other supplies include a scissors, stapler, bone folder (to crease folds) and ephemera which can be as simple as pictures from magazines, stickers or words from an old book.

Supplies nice to have are a paper cutter, a scoring board to mark folds, ink pads and dobber, corner punch, hole punch, and acrylic or water colors.  Actually, the list of supplies is only limited to your imagination.

So let's begin with the first page.  Take an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of cardstock, or two pieces of regular bond paper glued together, any color you want,  and fold to make 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch which will give you four pages for your journal.

You can cover the page with a digital scrapbook paper if desired and  glue it down with the A Plus Elmers glue stick which is purple but dries clear.  Or, you can leave the sheet plain and add the ephemera.

Add a large piece so you have a place to write.  Other items in this example are a part of a printed page, some numbers and a page decoration all of which were torn and edges were inked before attaching it to the page with Elmers Craft Bond stick glue.

Finally I added a memo tag,  some butterfly stickers and the words 'in your SOUL'.

Now it's your turn to create a page.  There is no wrong way, only your way, so decorate it anyway you desire...and then journal on the Week's question and the Day's thought.  But most of all, have fun.

Talk with you next Tuesday...

Have a happy and safe holiday...