Gratitude Journaling

Finishing Up My April-May Memory Journal

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

This was a last minute idea I had before hubby and I took a trip to the “westside” to visit family for a few days. I made a journal and gathered a few supplies hoping I would have time in the evenings to work on it. Most of what I did on the trip was gather and organize memories, then finished it up at home, which worked out perfectly.

This journal spans from about a month and a half, and because it became so thick and full it was difficult to choose which page spreads to share, but here are some favorites…

One of the first things I had to do was go to Daiso, one of my favorite stores. The tags on the left are from some little mesh bags I found, I never seem to have enough of them. Above them is a little art sticker from a local artist I picked up at Pike Place Market, and on the right a cute business card from a day at an arts and crafts fair. It’s tucked not glued so I can reference it later.

These are all from different days of our trip. Decorating these pages in chronological order was making this too much of a chore, so I decided to mix things up and just have fun with color and decor.

A pocket for my journaling page. That blue napkin on the right is from the Mother’s Day dinner at our son’s in-law’s house. What an awesome way to spend the day, chatting with my friend in-law while her husband cooked us dinner!

I tried to stick with what I had packed for the trip to work with even when we got home. I find that I am more likely to finish up projects when I limit my supplies. I can really go off the rails if I have too many options.

I printed up a few photos of flowers I had taken during a walk when my daughter and grandson were visiting. I print them up on copy paper, that way they don’t bulk up my journals and they make perfect backgrounds.

I made a tuck spot out of one of my “stash busting” clusters. That little art piece is from a little set I got at Daiso. A super quick page spread!

A little stacked cluster with some mini envelopes from Daiso to hold some of the business cards I collected on our trip. I didn’t want to lose the info on them, so this was a perfect fix. I got two of the business cards there on the right so I could use one of them as decor.

Also, you may notice that I’m inking the edges of just about everything lately. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I’m having a lot of fun with it.

A card from a friend I received in April. I used some of the decor from the envelope to decorate its new little home. And just a cluster with some fussy cut flowers on the right. As you can see, I’m having a lot of fun with color by not sticking strictly to any order. Just get things in the journal!

Using the envelope from one of my birthday cards to hold some journaling. The card was too thick, and cute, to put in this journal, so I’ll be framing it instead. On the right is a collage of some memories of our trip to Pike Place Market. Kell’s is our favorite Seattle pub, such a fun day!

At the end of the month I remembered about 20 things I forgot to journal about, so I just made a list and printed it out. I use these journals to document things I might want to include in our photo albums later, so I try to add as many memories as I can…

…which is why this one got a new “journal girdle”!

As always,

Thank you for the visit,

Have a great week,

~Patty

The “Gratitude Dailies” That Were

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I can’t believe it has been a month since I’ve written a blog post, but I decided (about a month ago) that I would give myself permission to float from project to project and and see where my creativity takes me.

And this is a perfect example of that…

A gift of homegrown eggs.

Sometime in September, I thought I wanted to give myself a little push to get into my journals more often. I should know by now that the word “push” does not inspire me, it makes me dig my heels in. How it was supposed to work was I take a photo everyday of something I’m grateful for and put it in my journal, it lasted for a week. Don’t get me wrong, I find plenty to be grateful for throughout the day, but taking a photo of whatever it is…every day? Ya, moving on…

A deer in the field.

But since I made an effort for one week, I thought I would share what I came up with. My daughter sent me a video of my grandson telling this whole yarn about how he spotted a deer foraging while he and his friends were building a fort in the field across from their house. He was so excited, I took a screen shot from the video, so fun!

Finishing up old projects.

I made some TN style journals and decorated a journal cover. Yes, in one day! I had all the ingredients to make about ten journals sitting in a container, all I had to do is put them together. I’m really wondering when I’m going to catch up on all the half done projects in my world.

Staying grateful for the small things.

My husband and I have taken several fishing trips this month, and I took very few photos. I just wanted to soak it all in. I didn’t spend very much time on our boat when we lived on the Puget Sound, but I absolutely love going out on the lakes now and navigating while my husband fishes.

And this is why I took a break from blogging. How do you share about a project you’re not doing anymore? But I did, and there it is.

I have actually worked on a few other things lately, so I will share about those soon.

Until then,

Thank you for stopping by,

Have a great week,

~Patty

Goal Setting and YouTubing

~ Patty Radish ~ 6 Comments

So, the goal setting thing kinda took off. My goal for 2022 is to Downsize!

Now, to me “downsize” has taken on a lot of meanings:

*Stuff=Self explanatory

*Projects=Finish up

*Chores=Delegate

*To Do Lists:Do

*Purchases=Use

…and here is where we pick up the story.

I’ve had a lot of plans over the years, and along with those plans were purchases of some pretty pricey items. Some of these items were just gathering dust for one reason or another. For example, my Silhouette “Portrait” cutting machine. I don’t know about you, but some of the simplest technology can throw me for a loop. So it became a dust collector, until I decided to spend a day wrestling with it, and I won!

Now one more project is knocked off my list! (and I have a box of stickers I need to downsize!)

And that brings me to the other subject of this post, YouTube videos. You will find the videos to these journal spreads on my channel, the link is in my sidebar.

This goal was twofold: Finish up half-done art journals (also called the “Art Journal Stack Wrap Up”) and use the video camera that was gathering dust. Check!

I thought that if I’m going to accomplish the goal of getting 6 pages or 3 page spreads done per week, I might as well record the process, which brought a whole other bag of technological worms along with it!

Social Media Downsizing: Use them or delete them

Over the last couple of years I’ve been on the fence as to whether or not social media was worth the effort, it can be a real time vampire, setting up the photos, photographing, editing, links, writing captions, but the payoff is building a community.

I don’t have crafty friends in my life, so I have to reach out digitally, which I don’t mind in the least. I consider myself extremely lucky to have these platforms to share my love of crafting and meet so many awesome people!

So, I’m jumping back in again, and I couldn’t be happier! I’m sharing on all the platforms I used to share on now…I’m not adding any more though (twitter=gone).

I’ll try to post here about once a week about my videos, with photos. I don’t video all of my page spreads, so I’l be popping those in here too.

As always, thank you for stopping by,

Have a great week,

~Patty

Thrifted Library Pockets

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

Last week, I promised I’d share a little more about my library pocket finds.

As usual I apologize for the sheer amount of photos, but I usually try to make up for that by keeping the chit chat short. So here goes…

I was able to pick up about 22 of these in this haul. At 25 cents apiece, $5.50 doesn’t seem too pricey, especially when you count in spending the day with our best friend thrift shopping. Priceless!

Some of the cuteness found inside the books. The page is of course from one of the books, again 25 cents, cha-ching right there!

You never know what you’ll find tucked into the pages of old books. I still have a four leaf clover I found in a very old book.

A selection of some keepers.

I bought all the books in another town, so I donated most of them to our local Senior Thrift Store that is sadly lacking in children’s books, so that was super fun!

Now to the art journaling portion of this post:

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

I made a sort of half promise to myself that I would finish up all my half done art journals in 2022, but I make that promise every year!

Does that equal a full goal or a 1/4 of a promise? Math isn’t my strong suit!

Anyway, I promised this would be about thrifted library pockets.

This is an image of a vintage radish. Clearly the sand has shifted to the bottom, much like this vintage Radish!

I had fun with this page spread. Yes, I have “Pants fitting problems!”, it’s called Christmas goodie overload!

I love that quote from one of my Happy Planner sticker books, I just couldn’t bring myself to actually put it in a planner. Guess I’m just not that motivated!

The tag selection: Library card, coffee stained tag with a floral sticker, large tag made from “under paper” (loosely described: paper used to protect your desk while painting something else), and a card made from art randomness with some info from masks I ordered online. (See why I need to downsize!)

I adhered a journaling piece that I had removed from a journal that was no longer working for me. It was a special memory of my dad. I love having a new home for it!

The photo on the front of the library pocket was taken on the trip where I said goodbye. A particularly sweet memory.

Well, that’s about it for now. I’ve been spending most of my time setting up my planner and coming up with some pretty loose goals for 2022 (guess I won’t be punching any days in the face this year!)

Until next time

Thank you so much for popping in,

Have a great week!

~Patty

Holiday Journal: Journaling Pages

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

The last installment of the Holiday Journals series, Yay!

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to move on.

I used my journaling pages for memory keeping and devotional tracking. The library cards tracked the date and scripture I read that day, and the tags are for memory keeping. Between social distancing and the weather, we didn’t get up to much, but there were a few things worth noting.

I had so much fun making these pages and decorating my tags that I’ve decided I want an entire journal of tags and pockets. Coming to your local blog soon! (The ugly sweater tag was a gift from a sweet friend=memory)

A selection of the tags from this journal. I loved having painted backgrounds with an addition of tissue paper or clear sticker paper, and then playing with the tags and pockets.

And now it’s 2022! Well at least in my journal.

Like I said, I’m really chuffed with these pockets. So much so that I went thrifting with my daughter and picked up as many “Discarded” library books as I could find, just for the pockets…so much fun!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this series as much as I did, but I’m ready for something new! How about you?

There’s so much inspiration out there, but so little time!

As always,

Thank you for stopping by,

Have a great week,

~Patty