Note: This is the sixth in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.
Day 6: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
This is a bit of a loaded question. I make every single day. I even write about making. But if I had to pick one thing that I made, recently, that I’m most proud of, it’s this journal.
Here it is! My *almost* perfect journal.
I’ve been a fan of journals since I was fifteen years old. With all the stuff I do in the digital realm, there’s truly nothing that works better for me than good old pen and paper – preferably in an attractive package.
The last few years, specifically, I’ve been exploring different options for journals – hoping to one day find a journal that would work for both personal writing and work notes. I’m a huge fan of Dot Grid journals and Action Method products, but I’ve been hoping for one that a) wasn’t plain black, even if it had a lovely embossed cover; and b) didn’t force me into having a to-do list on every page. In addition to that, I wanted to be able to color code pages (with labels) depending on whether they were work or personal, and I wanted multiple bookmarks, because I often have more than one thing I have to keep track of.
Love the dot grid. FEAR the dot grid.
The end result of many hours of thinking and sketching was the journal you see above. I still have a couple of design tweaks to make for future iterations, but I’ve been incredibly pleased with the result so far.
The exterior is chipboard, decorative paper and bookcloth from PaperSource. The interior is Neenah Environment PC100 writing, with a dot grid design and a line to add date, page references and numbers. There’s also a box specifically for “stuff to remember” (a nod to the Action Method’s “Backburner”), and a spot for a to-do list (which, right now, is half an Action Pad that I plan to tape to the page. Ideally, it’d be labels). I used bookbinding thread for the bookmarks and closure, which I’m thinking of changing in future iterations. Most of all, it’s PRETTY. Which is the point.
