Friday, January 9, 2015

WEEKLY PEEKS: 01:09

I think I finally have a plan that might work ... a plan for my planner for this year that incorporates all those things I like to keep track of as I make my way through my days and my weeks documenting life as I go. It's taken many years of experimenting. It's take many journals that remain incomplete. It's taken many hours of exploring on Pinterest, Flikr, Instagram - you name it as far as the internet web images searches go. But the inspiration abounds and leads me down a path of self-discovery, and I embark on my journey knowing full well what works this year will most likely not be the answer for 2016. And that's okay ... for today I share a peek into what the look of 2015 entails. Enjoy the show and if you feel so inclined, share a link in the comments below to your "journal peeks" and I'll drop by and leave some love along the way.

Early on, before the year started I designed a week-at-a-glance page with a little space for a favorite quote, words of motivation, special memories or dates/events to look forward to ... or just room for extra doodling practice.

One of the pieces of my journal that I have found to be critical for me is the "morning pages" space. Although they are not in the true Julia Cameron style, I call it my "thinking spot" and I tend to journal in snippets and blurts all through the day. At the end of the day I find it very relaxing to go back and review as I add fill-in doodles, color, and any bits of found text containing secret messages. It is good to have an end-of-the-day HARVESTING.
I am determined to make a dent in the bits and baubles stash this year and loved being able to work in the little drawing surround the snowman sticker as way of making note of the current weather conditions. You'll also see angels being included on several pages throughout the year as they seemed to have become a very strong presence in my life these days. I kind of like having them hang around.
One of the hardest decisions to make this year was what to use as far as a "home" for my words, doodles, and drawings, I did come to the conclusion that I wanted to continue with the composition notebook and I much prefer the graph paper rather than the college ruled paper. However, it is quite thin and that means gluing or taping two pages together to make a single page, and it also means I need to really do some serious thinking about which mark makers will work. No wet medium here, which in the end is okay because this is a traveling on the go document. I MUST have color on my pages and so far my gel pens, my sharpie, my oil pastels, and my colored pencils are serving me well.
I love including little drawings, doodling practices, and sketching in my journal ... ideas and designs, marks I want to remember. And this is where I experimented with my Tombow and Copic markers to see just how much bleed through might occur. Not bad, and well worth the smile this little bit of bright summer hope brings to these bitterly cold winter days here in the Berkshires.
And so this is how I dealt with the marker bleed through ... and it was a smashing kind of day anyway. I had not done this much before in the past in my "thinking spot" journals. I have done smash-journaling only as a response to a prompt. This was fun. I got rid of three magazines and captured my day, my feelings and my thoughts (as well as covering up a rant) and ended up with one of my most favorite pages to-date.

Thanks for stopping by and remember to leave a link 
to your journal peeks post so I can come visit you, too.









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