New Journaling Insert

No, I still don't have the craft room cleaned and ready to go.  I have been fighting illness for the past several weeks and this week it finally caught me good and hard with Bronchitis.  I've spent the last 3 days doing very little, but today I pulled out my journaling insert and decided to do some decorating.  I finished my last insert in February and so I decided that rather than pulling out another Moleskine Cahier insert, that I wanted to make my own this time.  I started with a piece of 12X12 watercolor paper from Close To My Heart and some Tomoe River paper and went to work.  I prefer sewn inserts because I feel like they are better on my elastics, so I used dental floss to hand sew the pieces together.  I was ready for March with a brand new journaling insert.  I haven't gotten bold enough to decorate the cover but when I do, you will see it here.

Some days I journal on the plain white pages and just add stickers, washi, or other decorations.  Some days I use Distress Crayons and other days I use watercolors.  Since I'm not feeling like doing much right now, I decided to play with some watercolors and prepare some pages to be ready to journal on.

The first spread started out as a practice page for clouds and mountains using my Daler Rowney Aquafine  watercolors.  That didn't turn out so well, but the light blue will make a pretty background for the words inside of me.  The next side was just blocks of color that shows how ready I am for Spring.  I also the Mini Chickenwire stencil from The Crafters Workshop.  Ironically, after I finished the page, I looked out the window and it was snowing.

The next layout started out as a practice page for roses.  Nope, there are no roses here as I ended up washing them out with the pink and purple background.  However, since I had just completed the background pages, I wanted to have a little more on this page so I free-handed some flowers, added lots of splatters, some black Micron pen strokes and dots and a card from Ali Brown.  I absolutely love this layout and can't wait to fill it with words.

How about you?  Do you keep a journal?  If not, I hope you will start.  No, you don't have make your own journal insert, just grab a notebook of some kind and start writing.  This isn't the first journal I've had and no two journals have to be the same.  Just find a place to put your thoughts and go to work.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Remember to take some time to enjoy the little things.