Designer Showcase: Journal Cards

Have you been seeing journal cards on projects?  I've seen them popping up in all sorts of kits, both digital and traditional. They seem to have gotten a big push with Project Life. Now they are being used in a number of ways.  Hi there! It's Cathy here to share this weeks Designer Showcase, which, as you probably guessed, is all about journal cards.

Project Life is a scrapbook methodology created by Becky Higgins that was started to help simplify the process. To help get your memories and your life recorded, but to do so in an effective and efficient manner that leaves you more time to spend on.... your life.  To do this, she incorporates the use of  photo pocket pages and 4x6 journal cards to help you get it done.  You can read more about Project Life here.

K&Company has also used similar ideas with their Smash books. They have coordinating Smash Pads that make the journaling so much easier!

You can use these products and techniques in your own style of scrapbooking.  Many scrapbookers have been making their own journal cards.  Whether you use predefined prompts, or just let the writing flow, the end result is the same: you are getting your life recorded!  Here are some projects where we've used journaling cards.

In the layout above, Marlene was scrapping a fun day that needed a bit of explanation   She had created the layout with a blocked area for the photos.  This didn't leave her much room for journaling.  So she slipped a journaling card between the main part of the layout (blue) and the outer frame (black). She attached a string to the skunks tail that when pulled reveals her journaling. Clever!  A great use for a journaling card and a great way to place your journaling if you want it to be hidden.

This is an older double page layout that I did. I cropped journal cards, envelopes and my photos all the same size (I think they are 2x3").  I added journaling to the cards and placed some ephemera from our trip in the envelopes. A bit of paint on a roller stamp made a border frame. Without a lot of elements to layer, it was a quick page to create that captured many fond memories.

This is another quick page that I created (quite some time ago). My one son and I love to ride Rock n' Roller Coaster when we go to Disney World.  The photos are the ones that you can buy at the shop and the end of the ride.  I used a journal card that had the prompts pre-printed on it.  It made it so fast to get down the basic facts. I then added a Disney sticker and a Prima rhinestone guitar and the page was done!

These are part of an album in progress. My apologies for the poor photos of it.  I'm currently working on this in my spare time.  It has photos from a trip that we took to Hawaii. There are so many wonderful photos and fantastic memories to include in the album.  Rather than doing my typical scrapbook pages of all the photos (which would take me a long time), I'm creating this album that has 4x6 prints of the photos as well as some hand made journal cards. I've been using my Silhouette Cameo to create the journal cards. Some are shapes that can be purchased in the Silhouette Online Store (they have lots of them!).  Some I create by "welding" shapes or fonts.  They are making it easy for me to document the trip as I work on the album.

I'm sure that many of you have used journal cards creatively in your projects. We'd love to see them. Send them to me at scrappycath(@)gmail(.)com (minus the parentheses) and we'll showcase them in an upcoming Reader's Pages post!