Hello, it’s been a while! I hope your new year is full of love and light so far!

Even though I haven’t spent a lot of time here in quite a while, I have definitely been keeping busy. Over the holiday season I worked on finishing up two Christmas journals (I shared those mostly on YouTube). It was fun until I caught something that knocked me on my butt for the rest of the year. I’m better now and decided at the last minute to join “Junk Journal January” on IG. Now, I went back and forth about this because I took on a pretty big custom project for my shoppe and it was so much fun to work on I couldn’t put it down. But, I dipped back into J.J.J. a little late in the game, and I’ve really been having fun with it.

I’ll be sharing ‘week one’ today, ‘week two’ next week, and so on.

Here goes…

Day 1: ‘Resolutions’

I kept my resolutions (printed on the bag of that tag) to a minimum. “Healing” my ‘Word of the Year’, “My Shoppes” I (re)opened my other shop to sell home stuff and jewelry, and I have a lot of stuff I could sell in my art journaling shoppe, “YouTube” so far that hasn’t gone anywhere, “House and Garden Plans” still in the works. And I’m continuing some of the good habits I picked up last year, like actual journaling, more on that in a later.

Day 2: ‘Quote’

Having a ‘Word of the Year’ has really helped me through some tough issues over the years. It’s a great way to focus your thoughts when they start jetting around your head. So, I wanted my WOTY this year to be “Healing” and I found this awesome quote to go with.

Day 3: ‘Throwback’

This prompt always throws me, it can mean so many things, but that’s what YouTube is for. Being late to the party with this challenge has its advantages, you can see what other people are doing and get ideas. I found this subscription form in an old book and I loved the garden theme, I glued a journaling spot on the back of it.

Day 4: ‘Tuck Spot’

I made two. That’s an envelope on the left. I do all of my journaling on the computer now, I print them up then stick them into my journals. I realized last year that the reason I stopped journaling was because my brain worked faster than my hand could write, and was losing my train of thought in the middle of my sentences, then I’d just give up. I don’t know why typing helps me keep my train of thought, but it does, and if it works, go with it! (also, spell check is my friend!)

Day 5:’ Daily Log’

This isn’t as much a ‘daily log’ as much as a reference list. This is what I referred to while working on the project for my shoppe. I really had fun with the decor on here. The stitched cluster paperclip was something I saw on Youtube, and the photo in the pocket is an old postcard that needed a home. Most of my pages in this journal are on the muted side, but it’s a nice vacation for the eyes after all that color I used in my Christmas journals. I did a flip through on my YouTube channel if you want to check those out.

Day 6: “Memory”

This was serendipitous, I had grabbed a book the day before and a dried, pressed flower fell out. It was a flower that my grandson had picked for me in 2022 I had forgotten all about. The flower on the right is pressed between some clear label paper and tracing paper. The one on the left I used some packing tape and tracing paper. I’m sure there are better ways of preserving flowers, but they needed a home before they fell apart, or I lost them again. The hydrangea photo is from a trip to visit our sons last year.

Day 7: “Stitched”

This was fun! I took the inspiration from that small stitched paperclip and used it on this oversized one. The background of these pages are from an 80’s craft book, I lightly gessoed over. I added trim bits before stitching this mini file folder together to make a pocket, then decorated the tag with a simple running stitch.

Because these page are more than a week late, I have been struggling with when, and whether or not, to share them. Or, because I have shared these photos on Instagram, should I share them here? It’s a whole thing. In the end, I have been ignoring this blog because of my indecision. Let me know in the comments what you think.

I hope you will stay tuned for next week’s installment of this project!

Until then,

Thank you so much visiting,

Have a great week,

~Patty