A little bit of background history… In grade school, we had a very strict teacher/principal who was really particular about penmanship. If I may say so myself, I would say I had a pretty good penmanship. I also remember my sister who was my role model for writing neatly that I would try to copy her writing often and try to be like her. When I got to university, typography classes were my favourite and was proud to always get a perfect score. This was way before computers were prevalent and everything was hand-drawn or handwritten. I kept diaries and even diligently wrote one in Chinese as part of the homework when I took some language courses in Taiwan. Then I started keeping digital journals on my Psion.
Fast forward to more than 20 years later, here I am back to writing journals by hand. I thought this would help to put thoughts onto paper while at the same time use this as a means to keep practising my handwriting. When I read Ronnie’s post in December about “writing your heart out”, I was immediately sold on the idea and decided to use a handmade MTN insert for a start. I quite enjoyed the process as some of the prompts were thought-provoking. And then I started getting ‘creative’ and added in some art into the pages when I transitioned to an A5 size journal book in January. I also use prompts from this book when I’m stuck with a prompt or one I cannot relate to.
Here are a few of the pages. I am not very keen on sharing my writing as I feel they’re a bit personal so hope you understand.
Glued in ephemera from my stash… The ‘5’ was from the Chanel perfume sampler we picked up from the shop counter a few weeks ago.
Got inspired by this pin.
Practising my hand lettering.
Wanted to test out new pens and watercolours…
Making use of stamps from the Studio Calico past kits.
I look forward to adding an entry every night and I quite enjoy the process especially with having prompts to guide me. I think now adding pictures to my words make my journal more interesting to read 🙂 I’m not sure why I didn’t do this before.
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