I have an approach-avoidance relationship with journals. I love what people are doing with journals. I long to keep the really cool travel journals with sketches and drawings that people do (almost made it with a travel journal when I went to Italy last summer, fizzled out in the end). I would love to have a collection of journals that reflect my thoughts, ideas, worries, triumphs, secrets, art, etc; but I never seem to get to creating/recording them. I just bought Diana Trout's Journal Spilling (you can buy it from Diana, order it from Amazon or buy it in a book store) and really like her approach; but, I don't know how long I'll stay with it as I work my way through it. The closest I've come to keeping an art journal is this blog.
However, I do write lists, carry things around, and make notes to myself. I have a blatantly disorderly approach to journaling on paper...So, I make journals that reflect this inconsistent. untidy approach. I sew vinyl pockets and tags and different types (and sizes) of pages into my journals. Thinking that others may be intimidated by tidy, pristine books to journal in, I'm going to put my journals up on my web site to sell (and, if no one wants to buy any, I'm set for journals for a long time).
I've been working on making journals for the past 3 days and have completed 26, which I will probably get up on my web site this week-end (to join the one lonely journal that's posted there now). I took some photos of the process.
Here is a pile of empty fabric journal covers. There's an image and free form stitching on each cover. The covers are made from some of my favorite fabrics and from vintage cutter quilts.
Here are some of the tags I insert in the vinyl pockets (colored with Aileen Roberts' wonderful color mists, which she sells on her website.
I sew the pages as one signature onto the inside cover of the journals.
A sampling of journal pages after being sewn into the cover.
Besides inserting at least one tag into one of the vinyl pockets in the journal, I also sew one of my polymer buttons onto each cover.
Here's a sampling of some of the journals.
