Day 10/365

No, this isn’t really all of my journals.  It’s just the most organized-looking photo of some of my favourites and currently in-use journals.  What I want to talk about today are some of the uses of my journals, maybe they’ll inspire you too!

Some of these are books that I’ve handbound, and others are books I’ve collected over the years, from other hand binders.  There are several from Italy (Florence, Venice and Rome), and many from other binders here in Toronto and across Canada.  I feel I should come clean and admit that I don’t use all of them.  A few are in the queue to replace books with only a few blank pages left.

While I have journals for: ideas, to-do lists, sketches, favourite quotes, dreams, ramblings and other categorized observations, I usually have one daily journal.  This is the one that goes everywhere with me, fits in my purse, is rugged and tough yet beautiful enough that I sometimes use it as ‘advertising my craft’ when out on the town.  It’s also the test-run of my new indigo journals and is pictured above.

It’s pretty liberating to have this book as a catch-all for everything, no stress about perfect penmanship, clean sketches or having the best ideas.  I use it for everything: to-do lists, measurements of projects, contact information, ideas, sketches.  It’s a lovely snippet of this time in my life.  Looking back on my other, older, daily books, it’s interesting to see what my focus was at the time, what my inpirations and dreams were all about.

If you have a book that you really love and want to use but just aren’t sure, this is where I suggest to start; a book of plenty.  I’d love to hear how it goes!