This week, I’d like to share a couple of the journals I’m working on – one about me, and another for the year.

These are the first visual journals I’ve ever done; I think of them more like scrapbooks but with more journaling.

This one I made back in 2019, my first multi-signature journal.

Don’t ask me why, but I decided to include 12 signatures!

Not something I’ll ever do again, I’m sure, as I do not have that level of patience anymore.

If you want to see how I put it together, here’s the blog post I did about it in 2019.

The journal measures about 15cm across and the length is 21cm with a 5cm spine.

There are 12 pages (24 sides) per signature making a total of 288 sides.

Here are some of the pages in the journal - a mixture of scrapbook papers, vellum, music sheets, magazine and book pages, envelopes, and tissue paper.

The journal remained unused until the end of last year when I finally decided what to use it for – me.

I don’t tend to focus on myself when I scrapbook or put together albums, but I have loads of photos of myself younger and before I had children.

So, instead of putting them all in a scrapbook, I thought it would be more interesting to make a visual journal.

It’s coming together slowly as I don’t work on it that regularly, but it is fun, and I spend a lot of time reminiscing over the photos.

I haven’t shared any of the layouts as the photos include other people.

This journal I made near the end of last year and it, too, was destined to sit unused on the shelf.

Until my favourite journal-maker, Johanna Clough, announced she would be selling monthly ‘Journal with Me’ kits.

That was the perfect excuse for me to start a ‘2022’ journal, documenting not only ‘events’ but also more everyday stuff.

The measurements are the same – 15cm x 21cm but the spine is 4cm.

There are 4 signatures with 12 pages per signature giving a total of 96 sides.

Here’s a look in the journal, mainly the unused pages, as some of the photos in the layouts are personal.

I’ve used scrapbook paper, book pages, music sheets, and tea-dyed paper.

I’m a little behind on this, having only done the first 3 months.

I thought it would be fun to start ‘April’ in the video and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

It certainly helped that I’d made my decisions beforehand as I dither a lot, trying to work out what to put where.

If you want more of a look into my personal journals, here’s the video for it, which includes the ‘journal with me’ clip at the end; I hope you enjoy it.

Personal Journals