Christmas Journal with Me

Christmas journal with me, will you? Just remember that journaling can be what ever you want it to be. In previous Christmas Journals, both spiral bound, I have mostly glued in found imagery when I made them and stopped using them in December. Inspiration, prints and cards with a holiday theme. In the end I never found anything to write in them, and they’re mostly still blanks, although decorated to the teeth.

This year, I’ve done it differently. I have added printed dates to all the pages, and journaled a little snippet about my day. I even printed a couple of photos, and I have taped in business card that I collected at a Christmas Design Market we visited. I’m using it in a different way, probably because I’ve practiced this style in my Randomosity notebook.

I filmed a flip-through of the whole Traveler’s Notebook before I started using it, and then a couple of days in to December I filmed a little journal with me, showing my process. I mashed it all together into a new video for you guys.

I hope this video will ignite your own creativity and inspire you to do some some Christmas journaling or cut and paste on your own, maybe it will not cure the Christmas Blues for everyone, but I hope it will cheer you up as it did me, if you need it…

Here’s the video:

More notebook flip-throughs and process videos coming to YouTube next year, so please subscribe to my YouTube Channel – and when you do press the little bell next to the subscribe button and you will be notified when I upload something new straight away. If you haven’t seen it already, also check out my previous TN video (about my DIY covers etc).

My First Journal with me

I thought I had figured out how to film without getting my head into the shot, but this time I messed up and I had to cut out a lot of footage because you couldn’t even see the table and what I was doing on the film. That’s one of the reason I didn’t get it up last week. But the good bits, where you can see what I’m working on, is in the video above. I hope you like this “journal with me” – or you might just call it a cut and paste session.

I love working in this Christmas Journal so, so much. I hope you can tell by looking at the video. It was really strange to see myself working in it, when I watched back on it. It is like a secret reveal of how my hands move that not even I was aware of, because so much of my process is done without thinking. First I start with an idea, but then often I go into a flow and “just do”. It is great, but then it is difficult to describe how I work. I obviously flip back and forth a lot when I glue things in, and look for spots where I can add in stuff.

I think one of the reasons I finally did some real Christmas journaling, as in writing in between all the washi tape and santa-images, is that I decided to be honest and personal. To not care that I can’t document my cute kids (I don’t have kids) or our big decorated house. Instead I’m making a page about why it isn’t decorated, how I dream about waking up to a decorated apartment but don’t have enough energy right now to bring out all the holiday decor… And I found I actually enjoyed writing about it, it calmed me down, it made me happier.

The Truth will liberate us, right?

Please let me know if you’d be interested in seeing more “journal with me” like this in the future.

Here’s my messy desk this December, my happy place:

Doesn’t it look merry and bright? Ahum, or maybe just messy and crazy, depending on who you ask.

When I created some Christmas themed travler’s notebooks to sell (all sold out now, thank you!), I of course also made one for myself, my first Christmas Traveler’s Notebook. I’m so happy I did, even though I had no plans to fill this month with Christmas Journaling, it has made my December a lot nicer.

Get a wall calendar here

I am so happy to also have finished and uploaded a wall-hanging calendar to my shop today. It has a few of my favorite collages from my previous 365 collage project. I so hope you guys will like it as much as I do. Buying something from my shop supports an independent artist (me) that will continue to post free videos, blog posts and inspiration here next year too.

Thanks to you if you can buy one of these collage wall-calendars.

• 2018 WALL CALENDAR – printed and bound by me
• 2018 WALL CALENDAR – digital download that you print yourself

Wanna connect with me, I’m on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Periscope. You can also “heart” my Etsy Shop and get notifications when I post new stuff, if you have an account there. It all means a lot to me.

Have a great day my dears.