Journal For Life

8-8-24

via yumiincolor on instagram

antique book turned into a watercolor journal

Reminder that sketchbooks aren't supposed to look like portfolios. Fill then with garbage and half finished doodles, it's okay. It doesnt need an aesthetic or a theme. You've just watched too many sketchbook tours and its ruined what sketchbooks are: a place to experiment where things don't always end up perfect

cause i’m a paper chaser, just living my life. by downeastgirl88 featuring mini pens ❤ liked on Polyvore

Lilly Pulitzer Lover’s Coral Large Notebook / ban.do Lady of Leisure Mini Notebook / kate spade new york Dahlia Concealed Spiral Notebook / Sugar Paper Metallic Polka Dot Notebook, $23 / Vera Bradley Mini Notebook with Pocket / Nuuna Glossy Lips Notebook, $16 / Miss Selfridge Florabunda Notebook / Harrods London Collage A5 Notebook, $17 / Ted Baker mini pen / Ted Baker mini pen / kate spade new york “Pretty Little Thing” Mini Notebook, $11 / sugar paper Perfect Dot Notebook / Ted Baker embossing pen, $20 / DENIK Stop To Smell The Rosè Notebook / Feria Notebook design by Christian Lacroix

About 200 journals/ sketchbooks from 1999-2016.

hey can you do me a favour?? Can you go get that nice pristine sketchbook or journal you've been hoarding and put some kind of mark on the first page? Anything will do, like a smudge of graphite or a blob of ink, or perhaps a very scribbly dinosaur. Just put something there. Please, or the dinosaur will be sad.

So many sketchbooks. I've been on a pursuit to find the more perfect mixed media or watercolor sketchbook, I might have found a watercolor one but not mixed media.

Reviving this account to share my bookbinding crafts with fellow tumblr book nerds.

Here’s a few examples of the work I do. If you like it, you know how it goes, put an rb or follow on it.

I’ll do separate posts for any of the different projects if folks are interested in how I make them.

#sketchbooks #whybother with #sketches - everything is #sketchy ur #wholelife #sketch sketch sketch. forget it https://www.instagram.com/p/CekAgwWJygM/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

La #waikiki ❤️ da #sketching ➡️#gallusbooks #sketchbooks (at Cala Waikiki) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf16Vz5NYgK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I don't editorialize much on here, but that last reblog got me thinking:

As of a couple weeks ago I have officially been maintaining this blog for just over nine years. In that time I've shared and reblogged hundreds, if not thousands of peoples' notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, planners and what have you. And in that time I've essentially witnessed firsthand the "gentrification" @katesattic alludes to.

I like notebooks, and I enjoy seeing them used in all kinds of ways. Notebooks are tools, after all, and different people will have different needs. I've seen meticulously laid-out bullet journals, angsty scrawls on wrinkled composition book pages, hodgepodge decorations pasted onto junk journals, sketchbook pages both messy and not.

I like seeing them all. They're all perfectly valid. It's just paper, in the end.

But I'm not gonna lie, there is a very specific stripe of Instagram-native Aesthetic™ journaling that sticks in my craw. If you've been maintaining this hyperfixation blog for as long as I have, you start figuring out the difference between an art journal and a stationery store advertisement, between store-bought ephemera and actual ephemera (in the original dictionary sense of the word), between self-expression and curated content.

I'm not gonna begrudge people who like their cute papers and stickers and washi tape and stuff (because tbh I'm much the same way), and if that's your version of journaling that's fine. It's just funny seeing how much journaling as a hobby (and notebook-keeping in general) has gotten so ruthlessly commercialized and sanitized that people tend to forget they're tools, with as much substance as what people put into them.

The pressure to "prettify" what should be private, intimate notebooks for an unseen audience is a greater symptom of how much social media has warped and eaten our brains, and I wholly cop to being part of the problem. I have an entire IG account full of my journal pages from quarantine, but I do want to point out that they're not all that pretty or even visually interesting much of the time. If you can't reverse the trend of Aesthetic™ journaling, the least you could do is encourage people to not care if they're ugly at all. Though ultimately the end goal is to be secure and comfortable enough with your notebooks that you don't feel the need to share them online in the first place.

Experiment. Plan. Vent. Cry. Practice your art. Make messy lists. Rant about your parents. Make mood boards. Wax poetic about your blorbos. And do it like noone is watching.

Illustrated Nature Journals Document the Diverse Beauty of the Outdoors)

I'm as free as the breeze and I ride where I please

Some sketchbook bits :^)

Rustic Journal // crearting

Knight of Cups

Ballpoint Pen

Song is “Knight of Cups” by Marcus E Eriksson

This is a redraw of the knight of cups I already drew. I felt like it didn’t fit in with the rest of the deck.

Tarot merch in my Redbubble. https://www.redbubble.com/people/anyaboz/shop