Journaling Stuff

A couple of ladies from the Soul Journaling group were interested in my method for organizing the images and such used in art journaling. Here is my preferred sorting system:

This is my shoe box used to house all the IMAGES I find that I may someday choose to use in my visual journal. Until recently these were stored in a plain old brown cardboard box - but I got this one for Christmas - and isn't it SO MUCH cooler!! I likely already have more images than I will ever use BUT there is room for many, many more. I dislike the messiness of having lots of magazines and such lying around waiting for me to use them so this allows me to immediately remove what I want from them, (I calling it mining, lol!) and throw away the excess. BUT THERE'S MORE...

I use this clear pouch, a leftover from my scrapbooking days, to hold EPHEMERA. Little tidbits from my daily life that I find any and everywhere! There are receipts, tickets, fortune cookie fortunes, the sticker from my favorite coffee, tags, pieces and parts from mail, photo negatives, interesting pieces cut from gift bags, etcetera, etc. I'm like a crow. I just collect whatever catches my fancy. AND THERE'S EVEN MORE...

Also making use of those wonderful magazines, I located this great little item to store and organize all the LETTERS I can use in my journal. This gem has 28 perfectly sized compartments that lock, (which is terrific for someone as naturally clumsy as I!). I assigned one compartment to each letter of the alphabet except I combined W & X as well as Y & Z. Doing this gave me four spare compartments for things such as punctuation and small words. There is  pocket on the left hand side into which I deposit very large letters, and interesting words and phrases as I see fit.

So, all my images, ephemera and lettering are sorted and contained in these three, relatively small, containers. Having perfected this system of mine allows me more time to create and work in my journal since less time is spent on gathering the necessary materials when I am ready to journal.

 

I hope this is of some small assistance. If it is please let me know and should I be able to answer any questions or be of encouragement to any of you just getting started or just interested in how I work it would be my pleasure to do so.

BTW, this is just my personal method. Should you be aware of a better way or a way to tweak this please inform me...I need all the help I can get!!!