JOURNALS

Journaling has been a lifelong tool for both Bev and me. We find this mode of self-exploration invaluable. But I personally struggle with my handwriting. I once had wonderful handwriting but as I have gotten older I tend to write big and in a sort of code—one I myself tend to not be able to decipher! Now Beverly, on the other hand, has the cutest handwriting! She is very precise but it’s so darn tiny! I need a magnifying glass to read it! But the value of writing our thoughts is still worthy of our time.

We decided to make our first venture into journals for ourselves—in many ways. In Writer’s Coloring Journal, A Handcrafted Visual Art Collection for Exploration of Colors and Written Words, we combined blank pages for writing with intermittent illustrations tucked into the corner of other writing pages to allow both sides of the brain to be activated. We find for us, this is a good experience in allowing our writing to flow. We also took the opportunity to get in some interesting history (and photographs) of the illustrators, Bev’s mom, and uncle, in the beginning of the book. After all, it’s for writers so why not give them a little push to inspire them to use the stories of their families into their writing? It’s also a pretty big book of 244 pages!  We found that most journals on the market have much fewer pages, but I personally dislike having a bunch of smaller journals cluttered about, so the bigger size allowed all my snippets of ideas to stay in one place.