Journaling - Setting Up Your Journal

Gorgeous journals make me freeze up. Family and friends over the years have given me the most luscious blank books, but I was afraid I would mess them up.

I want my journals to be a place where I feel free to experiment and make mistakes. So my choice for
journals are old hardback books. They are easy to find at flea markets and garage sales, and are almost always cheap. Of course I always check to make sure I am not about to destroy a valuable first edition.

My favorite book size is 5.5 x 8.5 inches. I cut paper 5.25 x 8.25 to glue inside. That is the size of all my templates here at What Makes Us Come Alive.

To insert drawing paper that is thick enough to paint on or collage, I trim an existing book page to about a one inch tab. I then put a scrap of paper behind it (so glue doesn’t stick onto the next page) and run a strip of glue along the tab. 

Then I line up the blank paper, (or art that I created (like the mosaic I glued together above) or a template along the glued tab and press. If the book gets too thick I rip out original pages.