“Common Place Journal”

Hi friends,

I have been a bit absent this week as I am on leave and I spent a couple of days with my sister for her birthday. It was a great time shopping, talking, laughing, eating and generally just doing sister stuff!! Back to work tomorrow!

Over the weekend it has been beautiful and I have been out in the garden, to do some much needed tidying up. So happy it’s now Spring here in Australia!!

As you know I like to make the odd journal or three and they have a specific purpose as art, collage, memory keeping, junking, etc 🙂 I am making my boys a journal each and more on that soon.

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) – are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. … Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems,  proverbs, etc.  These are also known as Thinker Journals and I am definitely that.

I thought I would like to make two, to have. One on my desk and one in my bag to use as inspiration strikes. A little journal just to add ‘me’ stuff like inspiration, quotes, arty things I try, etc.  I think we all need that one space to collate our thoughts and ideas. I have been doing this for quite a while but not realizing I was.  You can use anything you want to as a journal but I, of course, am making my own special one!!

Thinking about the size of the journal that I want and what I want to put in it, I decided on a 5×7 book and I took the pages out to use the cover.  I am mainly wanting plain and lined papers in this to write on.

If you know me I like to puddle and this is no exception. I Gessoed the cover, as I want to add these gorgeous owl images that my sister gave me when we did a bit of a napkin swap 🙂 Napkins are so much fun to use and give a great look on any projects.

I am using my Tim Holtz glass media mat and it is non-stick but as I make a mess I always put baking paper under it. I usually need to move it so it makes cleaning up easier.

I was going to leave it white but decided on a sage color underneath for a bit of contrast to the napkins. I just sponged some over it randomly!

 

To prepare your napkins you need to make sure you take all the layers of the white tissue off the back. To get the tear in it where you want it, I used a wet brush and drew the tear line. It is much easier than tearing it the wrong way.

It’s up to you where you start. You need a good brush to adhere to the mod podge and smooth it under and over the This glues and seals at the same time.

I then randomly put more of the napkin here and there in a collage. I make sure I have some hanging over the edges. I then let it dry. It hardens as it drys and gives a nice aged effect. The wrinkling of the tissue doesn’t bother me.

 

Here is the cover of my other journal I am making at the same time. It measures approx 7x 9.5. I used the same Napkin technique on this also.

Once dry, I then turn it over and glue the napkin down inside the cover, making sure it is well stuck down. I add pattern paper to the inside, or as I did here a couple more of the images from the napkins. Allow this to dry also before you do anything else to it.

To finish the journal off I cut some lined and plain copy paper to size and then just used some pretty lace to tie it in around the spine and bind it. This way if I want to add or take out pages I can.

Now, his is my finished small 5×7 commonplace journal which I can take in my backpack with and use as I like 🙂

Above is my journal for playing in at home, to journal in 🙂 I just used different lined and plain scrapbook paper in this one from my stash.

 

I made some tags and lots of places to add journaling in the pages. I hope you like this little look at my Common Place Journals and you might like to try keeping one for yourself 🙂

Kerri x