A Monthly Journal practice

Since late last year I've been admiring the small monthly Daily Creative Practice journals I've been seeing around (especially Willa's collected from 2021 HERE). You can take the class, but I'm trying to limit my spending in that area and decided I am experienced enough to make up my own version. I had to purchase a few more file folders and found this lovely pack on special for $4.99

I've cut all the card to size but am not working too far ahead because I'm going to let these evolve organically each month so they become a true reflection of my creative focus for that time. They will become a way to track my creative life and capture the good things from my year. They are quite small, measuring 12 cm x 18 cm, so a lovely project that I feel is achievable. And it means I'll actually create a book a month this year 💜 

I picked blue for January since it is Summer holidays here with lots of blue skies and swimming. I started with some collage and stenciling for the backgrounds, before stitching the journal together.

Then I was ready to start using it. 

There are weekly spreads with journal blocks for me to capture highlights of my days and add extra collage or paint touches as I wish. I do these a week ahead with different shapes and mix up collage/paint options

You can see I'm using my collage fodder. For my last week I had 8 days to complete January so I painted onto a sticker sheet using the technique I'd used from Autumn Moon's painted papers and then was able to peel them off and stick them down

At the beginning of the journal I included a print from my first piece of art for the year containing my word of the year. 

When Effy announced her new Journal 52 weekly prompts for 2022, I decided they could have a place in here too, as well as photos and quotes. 

Sometimes photos can be added as tip-ins

I am so glad I decided to do this year-long project. It feels very manageable right now and I've planned ahead with which file folder colour I'll use every month. I chose Red for February because of the obvious Valentine's associations but also our Red light Covid setting. Also thinking about self-love and the things we tell ourselves. I have some gorgeous papers to use this month - gathering is one of my favourite parts of the process. I think those bits of turquoise will make this journal sing

I decided that since I'm so keen about adding stitch into projects this year, I'd do that on the cover.

Once more I'll be including pieces of art in the front of my journal from Journal 52 and any other inspiration that may strike. This is my first week's spread

I've glued down the first 4 weekdays but want to wait and see what inspiration might strike for arrangement of the weekend days. I am excited that Fodder school's teacher for February is Megan Whisner-Quinlan and expect I may want to inject some of that in here. 

I'm back at school working administration hours and we are back to normal school term with children from 8th February. I say normal, but given Omicron we'll just have to take one day at a time. Please look after yourself.