Designer Showcase: Journaling Techniques

You've heard the quote, "a picture is worth a thousand words".  Sometimes the picture can tell the story. But often we need to include some details to help us truly capture our memories.  Especially if we want to remember for years to come.  Today's Designer Showcase is going to be about Journaling Techniques.

Let's start off with a sample from Vicky. Vicky shared that she rarely journals on her pages. She has included a cute and quick way to include a few words of journaling on your page, add a tag!  This is a great technique to use to help add some character and detail to your page. If you make your page and sometime later decide to add some journaling, using this technique to add a tag is a great way to include those words without disrupting your original design.

Dolores shares a really neat idea for incorporating your journaling into your design. On this page, she has included her journaling in the shape of a heart!  I think this is so cool!  I also like how she has colored her text to reflect the colors from the designer paper at the top of her page, and to blend in like the sheen on the wooden paper. Great stylized journaling!

This is a page that I did a few years ago for my "book of me"  Made a list of the music that I like with the reason those songs are important to me in one column. Then on the larger column I let myself ramble on about how music has touched my life and how the technology of music has changed throughout history.  I included a few images that I found on the Internet and used photo masks and brushes to create the background.

 

This two pager is from a trip we took to Andrew's Air Force Base a few years back.  To help the journaling go with the page design and topic, I wrote it like an Air Force Pilot's Log.  My boys thought that was a "cool" idea. That got them to help me with the journaling!

For this page, I wanted to record how I feel about my husband's life in the fire service.  I found this poem and decided that was enough to capture the feeling that I wanted on this page.

Cindy is great about including journaling on her pages. She is sharing several ideas to get your started on capturing your thoughts. On this page, she has created a list. She suggests making a numbered or bulleted list. You can just include a few words and don't have to get overly verbose to record the important facts.

Cindy also likes to "tel the whole story". As she puts it: "most of my layouts have several paragraphs worth of journaling on them. I almost always hand write my journaling and often directly on the page.  This layout is about the story behind our son's name".  By using your own handwriting, you are also including that as part of your design and ephemera, so to speak. When people look back at your pages years from now, they will get to see what your writing looked like. It really gives the page a personal touch as well.

This page by Cindy is a great example of how to include lots of photos AND journaling too!  Since having many photos on the page takes up space, it doesn't leave a lot of room to include journaling. But Cindy has written her journaling on strips of paper and then she can fit them in to the space available. On this particular page, she used strips of vellum.  This coordinates with the vellum circle accents behind her title and date.

If you have private journaling that you don't want to share with everyone that looks through your albums, you could write it on the back of your pages.  Or you can create layers, such as flaps and removable tags that you can write the journaling on. Then you can slip the tag into a pocket or fold over a flap and have it hidden from view.

Journaling can be as many or as few words that you want to include on your page.  You can write as paragraphs in the middle of your page, or squeeze it in by writing around the edge of your page. What ever works for you!

I hope we have inspired you to branch out and have fun journaling on your pages.