A new perspective on journals

This past April I had a really fun day.  I drove about an hour to a scrapbook store to take a class from Heidi Swapp.  I really love her style and ideas so this was pretty much a bucket list worthy day for me - well, if I had a bucket list!  The class was simply great and she had some pretty cool ideas to share and also some new products (at the time) to let us play with.

 The class used her new mixed media kit as the base for the project along with items from both the Dreamy and Hello Today collection.  They do work so perfectly together!  We were making a journal!  I've always wanted to keep a journal but I think I'd rather end the day reading a book and escaping into another story than trying to relive mine, plus I'd probably get all Type A and add every last detail and miss the point of the exercise.  However, this was a new concept for me.  Heidi introduced the idea of journaling with prompts.  She had a list of sentence starters she had used and they were wonderful but I did end up taking things in a similar but different direction.

 This pretty little item now adorns my craft/office space.  We decorated this very VERY thick chipboard with the magic medium mixed with mint color shine.  I was introduced to Thickers stickers which I now love.  With a little stamping and some additional play time when I got home, I like the soft look of the book.

One request Heidi made was that we include a selfie on the first page of the book.  I had just taken this fun one with my pup and so I thought it would work well here atop this beautiful paper from the Dreamy collection.

This fun acrylic piece comes with the mixed media kit to which we added a sticker from the Hello Today collection.  You can see below another dotted acrylic banner that is also very cute!

And so we added page with paper and with photo pockets and continued to make the whole thing look very soft and pretty.  What I decided to do at home was to use the pretty lace cut paper and other epherma as the actual prompts for my journaling, which actually can just be a list or statement.  I date them and just add to it as I please.

For example, this beautiful tag with "hope" on it is a place to list out my hopes.  On the opposite page I used a stamp "big plans" and list out things I am looking forward to.

Some are just decorative cards with good sayings on them.  It's hard to see but I pulled this "10 things I love about you" sticker from the Vintage Chic collection and even (gulp) wrote down 10 things I love about myself.

I am in love with this concept.  I've already found that writing down a few things I want to accomplish has helped me actually do it.  I also know it will be a great place to find little memories about my life in that moment and to see just how quickly things can change.  There are few photos in this book, but lots of memories will fill the pages!