Journaling 101

One of my strongest traits in my scrapbook pages is my journaling. When you look at most of my work there are some pages that most of the layout is covered in words. My love for journaling began when I was a girl and lost both of my grandmas in one year, I was seven. I wanted to know so much about them. But there was no journals. As I became a young mother and wife and would ask my mother question she would say “that was a long time ago…I don’t remember.” I knew that I would record everything…the good, the bad and the truth.

This is also why I have loved blogging! Because I can quickly record life and then have it printed as a journal. I have over 18 journals that I started when I was a girl to date. Most of my entries are now based gratitude and sharing the everyday blessing that I have found in each day.

One of the best tips I have for journaling and getting a topic started are from lyrics to songs. I have a small not book that I carry with me and when I am listening to songs and here one that has a line or chorus I like I jot it down so I can then search for the song lyrics I print them and mark the part I like. Then when I have photos and I am stumped I look through that list and WALLA!

I love using my own handwriting and to do this I will write on strips and then cut add to the page…I do that on a lot of layouts because then I do not need to worry about spacing of lines or when you have wrote two or three sentences and then mess up…darn that is bad news. If you do have a lot of journaling to add to your page that you want to add as your own handwriting this is something I do. I do it so 1. I can know how much space the whole story will take up 2. So I can edit and spell check (I need all the help I can get)
Type in a font size that would be equal to your handwriting size would be (with additional line spacing) then print it. Next use a light box as your guide and hand write your journaling.

I have been using a lot of handwritten journaling strips on my layouts (since my printer was out of commission for over a month) so I will be doing more again with typed journaling. I generally only use about two basic fonts when adding printed journaling.

I will be sharing a lot more on journaling throughout the month. I know there are people out there reading my blog…I treasure when you actually leave comments. I hope that what I do will help you and that you are inspired to journal more!