Personal Thoughts

I realize it’s been a while since I last blogged and maybe some of you are thinking of calling the blog police to make a Missing Bloggers Report (Ha, I only hope!) so I thought of doing a Personal Thoughts entry as an update.

It’s the end of February 2017 and I’ve been on leave the past 2 weeks at home, waiting for the birth of my first baby! After all the walking around at work, it was a relief to finally stay at home and relax before baby comes out and creates a new round of havoc.

I enjoyed the first 3 days of leave just slacking around, doing some art journaling, reading, watching TV… and then I got bored.

You see, it is relaxing having no obligations or deadlines to meet, but after a while, life becomes very aimless. I felt like I was just floating around without a purpose, other than waiting around for baby to be born. I also felt like this was a waste of my precious leave.

So I took out the To-Do lists again and started giving myself some aims. I didn’t want to make my whole life full of deadlines again but I could commit to doing some ‘work’ in the morning and then keep myself busy in the afternoon with art or photography projects. In that way, I could also write enough articles to keep the blog alive even after baby came out.

Now I realize I made myself into something like a freelance writer. -_-!! I can’t complain that it’s a bad life, seeing that I wake up at any time I feel like and I’m actively doing something I’m good at, but most of all, I appreciate the sense of purpose it gives me. That now, instead of my identity revolving solely around being a mummy, I also have other things in life to work and develop towards. Treat it as a kind of school holiday, I guess.

And what happens when baby comes? Well, then I switch to taking care of him then. Just like during the school holidays, I also have to understand that this period of freelance writing is temporary. I’m not in it to make money or build a career (though it would be a bonus if I did!) but rather to create a sense of purpose and identity. To help me see myself as a more rounded person, more than just being a teacher or a mother.

Whether this continues or not still remains to be seen. But after all, this blog has seen a few years’ hiatus and has weathered it through to be better in the end. I may take it up again after I have kids or I may end up neglecting it until the kids get married and I have Empty Nest Syndrome -_-!! More importantly, for now, I feel I’m working towards something and even if I leave it aside, I have something else waiting for me to take up again later in life.

The Story of 2 Journals

This is the story of 2 journals. 

The one on the right, labelled "It's gonna be okay", was bought when I was going through a low time of my life. I seemed to be screwing up all the time at work, even when I was trying my best, and I felt like I was alone and had nobody. I bought the journal to rant, basically, to release all the excess toxic thoughts and to help me think a way through. 

The '16' journal on the right has a different story. It was given by a friend who had no use for me and ironically came a year late. (It really is a 2016 diary.) I loved all the cute illustrations inside and I thought it looked so happy, it ought to be a Happy Book. I started writing about happiness and all the little things that made me happy. 

After I started in it, I remembered the other journal and I took it out. The person who wrote those words inside seemed so far away from the person writing inside the Happy Book. I couldn't help but wonder: which journal would fill up first? Perhaps only time and my own efforts can tell. 

Junk Journals Tutorial 2: Part 2: Making a Book Cover

Hi all, sorry for the long break! We've been celebrating Chinese New Year here in Singapore and now that it's nearly at an end, it's time for me to finish up this tutorial too!

Today's tutorial covers how to make a cover for your journal and is very useful when you are making journals of your own. Once you have some simple steps mastered, the technique can be applied to making any kind of journal.

Making A Book Cover

You will need:

Tools and Materials
Paper (This would become your cover)
End Paper (Any kind of coloured paper, for the inside of the cover)
Adhesive
Bookbinding stapler (Or ordinary stapler and eraser, if you are following my alternative stapling method)

Here, for this tutorial, I have chosen a page out of Frankie magazine as the paper for my cover. The paper from this magazine is quite sturdier and after the end paper is pasted, will become strong enough to act as the cover.

Step 1: Fold the top and bottom edges of the magazine page to your required size. To gauge the size, I've put the paper from Part 1 on top. Leave a few millimetres allowance at the edges.

Step 2: Fold the right side down but cut the corners away. You should have something that looks like the picture above.

Step 3: Take away the notepaper. Stick the right side down. Then do the same on the left side. 

We're almost done. By this point, the top picture shows the inside of the cover and the bottom picture shows the outside after I folded it in half. 

Step 4: Open the cover and stick the end paper of your choice on the inside. Here I chose a piece of white paper to keep a clean look. This will also cover any ugly folding marks you made.

Step 5: Open the cover and open the notepaper to the centre. Clip the notepaper to the cover as if it were a finished book. The clips will keep the paper in place and make it easier to staple.

 Step 6: Turn the whole thing over and staple the paper to the cover.

Done! Here is the finished journal when closed and the tools I used!

Like I said, this tutorial is handy for making covers for any kind of journal or notebook, so save it and keep it handy!

Junk Journals Tutorial 2: Part 1: Free paper is great!

Today's junk journal tutorial makes use of a free notepad I received from some sale or exhibition. ( I totally don't remember anymore, sorry! ) I love to get these because, er, I'm a bit of a paper junkie, but I don't always like the advertising that comes with it. However, it is always easy enough to use the paper to make a journal that you would like and the best thing is, it came free!

This is useful because at times, I come across lovely stiff paper in pamphlets or programme booklets. Although I would just love to make them into journals, I can't, because of all the words on them. So I keep (or hoard) free notepads and notebooks for this reason. 
This is a very easy tutorial to do and even if you have just one free notepad, it provides enough paper to make a number of journals.

The green and white notepad is the one I'm using. It comes from a property website but I don't want to be reminded of that whenever I use it. 

Using Free Paper

You will need:

Tools
Scissors
Bookbinding stapler 
or Stapler and Eraser combo (As written in Tutorial 1a)
Adhesive of your choice (I'm using glue tape which I bought from Daiso)

Materials
One free notebook/notepad
Old brochure (Choose one with hardier paper)
Paper (for cover. I used a page from Frankie magazine with a photo that I liked)

Steps:
1. Tear out your chosen number of brochure pages. Fold the brochure pages into half. This would form something that looks like a small book, on the left.  

2. Tear out a page from the free notepad and stick it on top of each page. You're done! 

Ok, obviously you would be expecting a bit more than that. Now chances are, like me, your free notepad paper will not fit your brochure paper and you will see some words or pictures sticking out the top. To counter this, I explored a few ways to decorate the pages. If you used a brochure with nice pictures, you probably won't have to read the following (but please do, anyway). But if you used one with boring words like me, then here's some decorating ideas:

(Note: Where possible, I have included links to the companies that produce the materials I used. If I didn't, it means I either bought them cheaply or I have totally forgotten where they came from.) 

Most cheapo method: Use marker pens to colour a design at the top. Here I opted for a simple rainbow design. You can also substitute the marker pens for other art mediums of your choice, like watercolours. 

Washi tape: Stick your favourite washi tape over the uncovered parts. Tape bought from MT tape.

Use a stamp of your choice and stamp it repeatedly. Here I used an awesome one from Typo stationery. 

Cut scraps of paper from previous scrapping projects and paste them at the top. This paper was from a Flow Book for Paper Lovers while the one below was from a paper pad from Popular Bookstore. You can also use scraps of pictures from magazines or newspapers or brochures. 

When you are done, staple the pages together using a bookbinding stapler or my alternative stapling method.
When you are done, you will end up with a nice set of stapled pages ready to be journalled in! But nice pages need a nice cover to hold them all together, no? We will cover that in the next tutorial! See you then! 

Starting Afresh... Over the old memories...

Those who have been reading my blog know that from the last entry, I had decided to reuse one of my old journals and I had torn out the pages with bad memories in a kind of purging exercise. 

I didn't manage to do this with all the pages I wanted, though. There were some pages which had better memories on the other side, or other pages that had nice journal entries that I wanted to keep. For the sake of those better ones, I kept those 'dark' pages in the journal.

Yet, I didn't want to keep reminding myself of them every time I turned the pages. So I hit on a plan with an old calendar. 

I had bought this calendar from Workman Publishing in early 2016.

It's a beautiful calendar with an inspiring message for every day of the week and for months, I kept it on my desk, flipping to see the next message. 

Well, obviously the calendar I have is out of date by now, but there were many pieces of artwork inside that I liked very much. So I thought of doing some art journal pages with them over the 'dark' pages in my journal. Why not? Now the pages with the stuff that was better forgotten would be papered over with some better-looking art. 

And so the first page I did in this style is as seen below:

(That's my weekly journal on the right, kindly ignore 😅)

I guess you could call it cheap craft therapy, a way to be creative, forget the bad and replace them with better new messages for the future. It's easy enough to do with the calendar but if you don't, there are tons of inspirational messages being shared freely on Facebook or Pinterest. You can always print one out and paste it down and decorate it with washi tape or the embellishments of your choice. 

And trust me, definitely cheaper than therapy. 

Credits:

Workman Publishing prints other calendars besides this one and they also have a selection of books too. You can check them out at this handy link here.

Junk Journals, an Introduction: What are they and Why Make Junk Journals?

I recognize that the term 'Junk Journal' is something I created so others may not know what I'm referring to. Here's an easy definition:


Junk Journal:
A journal made out of paper (or other materials) that would be considered junk and thrown into the trash.


I've written a few tutorials on making these Junk Journals, so I thought it was time to put everything together in an easy to-do guide on my blog. Now that I had the chance to make a few, it's easier to compile what I've done and hopefully it will serve as an inspiration to you out there.

I guess the first question would be:

WHY? Why make a journal out of used paper, or even why journal at all?

Why keep a journal?
There are many reasons for this, depending on the individual, so I'll start with my personal reasons. 

1) For Organization
This is the main reason for my work journal, which I use to pencil in meetings I'm supposed to attend, and my all-important to-do list. I do this so that I remember all the tasks I have to complete and the deadlines I have to follow. 

Example from my work journal, made from an old notebook.

2) For Reflection
I also use my journals to reflect on the day and what I have to be grateful for. A gratitude log comes in handy for this and it can be as easy as just writing down one day during the day that you are grateful for. 

Example from one week in my junk journal.

At this moment, some of you may think, "But you can buy gorgeous planners and journals to do all of that! Why would you spend so much time and energy to make your own??" This is answered by the following 2 reasons:

3) For the Environment
Ever notice how much paper we use? At the end of the work year, I cleared my cubicle of all my unwanted documents and I ended up with a pile of paper a couple of inches thick. This is after I already threw out some stacks of paper. Not all the documents were printed by me either. Some were handed to me by well-meaning colleagues who wanted me to know the content of the documents. Obviously by end of year they were all obsolete. 

Usually, we'd just throw the paper into the recycling bin and I had to do that for a lot, but then I realized how many documents were single-sided. That left the other side of the paper blank to do whatever we wanted.

That's how much single-sided paper I 'rescued' and it's a small fraction of the paper I had to throw.

This got me thinking about the amount of paper we use despite living in an electronic world. Even though much of our work has been delegated to the Internet, it seems we still cannot do without paper. What if I extended the life of these documents further, by using them for just one more purpose, before chucking them?

And so, the paper helped me to serve my next purpose...

4) For Creativity
It really all boils down to this. I like to be creative. I like to see possibilities where others see junk and I like making those possibilities come to light. So where others see paper that's bound for the trash, I see paper that can be written on, drawn on, folded, cut, painted to anything I wanted. I like working with my hands that way, which is why online journals haven't quite cut it for me. Plus I really like it when the outcome turns out good. 

Yes, I like this layout and I'm quite proud of it, I'm not ashamed to say.

Is it hard? Yes. Some journals were a complete flop and I had to throw them.

Is it rewarding? Also, yes! Once I got the hang of a few basic skills, I realized how easy it was to give old notebooks a new lease on life and to decorate junk paper into what I wanted.

Are there drawbacks? Well, yes too. These include:

The need to buy some art materials. 

I use a lot of washi tape and stickers which I buy from scrapbooking stores. Yes, I do recognize that there's a certain irony in having to buy more materials to recycle some materials -_-!!! though it does serve the creative side. However, if you really want to keep costs down, all you would really need is a set of coloured markers and writing pens. 

The need for time. 

If you really want something that will earn 10K likes on Instagram, I hope you have the time in your busy schedule to work on that art piece! If not, you can also do simpler layouts with just your coloured markers that will still look good. Most of the time, I take a few minutes on a weekend to do that and then once in a while, when the mood strikes me, I do something more Instragram-worthy.

The need for ideas.

Sometimes you just stare at the blank page and you have no idea what to do with the blank pages staring back at you. You can take some ideas from the Instagram accounts I follow who post dazzling planner layouts. These include:

Inspiring Instagrammers

@planwithlynne
@catsbooksandcoffee
@dedralong
@thefoxyfix
@wansplansandexplorations
@happiescrappie
@sailormimzy
@cecicat
@thedailyroe
@theresetgirl
@mydocumentedlife
@scrappinlove
@cre8tiveplannergirl

Phew! I didn't realize the list was so long! There's no way you can't have a few ideas from some of these talented planner ladies! 

Have I got you inspired? The next step is to just start and try one! I'll be talking more about the materials you would need and where you can get them from next! 

Junk Journals

I've been making recycled paper journals, since it's that time of year where we have to move cubicles at work, and inevitably, there are tons of paper we have to throw or recycle. I sometimes feel a bit of a heartache when I have to do this, because I'm a paper junkie and I always felt like there was more I could do with the paper. Also, there were worksheets were I didn't use both sides of the paper and the blank side always held so much... potential. Yes, paper junkie >-<!!! 

Then I had the idea to try making recycled paper journals, or junk journals. Not that I put nothing but junk inside, but to use the paper which would have been junked, to make journals. At least if I managed to get one more use of the paper, I would feel *slightly* better about the environment and also maybe I won't have to buy any more notebooks for the rest of my life! Lastly, I would also be able to exercise some creativity in decorating the notebooks and *finally* depleting my stash of craft paper materials. 

Making the junk journal was easy. I planned a daily journal for November as a trial, then I chose some junk paper and stapled them together. After that, I decorated the pages with the layouts I wanted and finally, I filled in my daily entries.

Here's the result for November: 

(Note: Where possible, I have tried to include the sources for my materials, but unfortunately, I can't remember all of them, so if anyone recognizes them, let me know and I will put the sources in!)

Cover: Flow Book for Paper Lovers

Credits: Kikki.K 3AM notepad and Paperstone.sg to-do list

Credits: Ameba stuff My really busy week memo mousepad

Credits: 3M washi tape, Flow Book for Paper Lovers paper. Calligraphy stickers I bought from a flea stall but unfortunately, lost the lady's contacts -_-!!!

Credits: Paper on left from Daiso, on right from Kikki.k. 

Overall, I am pleased with how the results turned out, but I am also aware that it's not really recycling in the truest sense. I only managed to make such nice layouts because I had the nice paper in my house all along. The next step in this challenge for me, thus, is to make one without nice paper and to start from scratch. 

Still, if you are a paper junkie like me, and you also have a sizable stash of craft paper, this is something easy you can do to use your stash for a worthy cause. If you just have to have nice paper, Daiso sells a good range and for SGD$2, you can buy enough paper for a month. For a year's worth of journal entries, that will cost you around $24, which is cheaper than a Moleskine but you might still get cute diaries cheaper than that, so weigh the costs and decide if it's worth it for you.