Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
/Carl Sandburg

These days I almost exclusively write with black ink in some form. Right now my favorite pen is the Pilot Hi-techpoint V5 Grip pen (a Fine Roller Ball Pen with black ink). The metal nib seams to hold up for the pressure I put on it daily. I’ve written with the same pen all summer and it still works! Pen testing (for me) needs to go on for some time before you can give a true testimonial and judgment of the pens long-term qualities.

I have tired of the Pilot G-tec-c that used to be my favorite. It has the thinest nib ever and when you write with it it feels great, but it does not hold up in the long run. The nib keeps breaking before the ink runs out and it drives me crazy that I have to through away a half full pen over and over again. It is too costly to be a staple good in the house, so when one pen breaks I try to keep writing with it but the nib gets stuck in the paper, I get irritated, the ink pools and smears - and I though it in the trash with a sigh.

In my last order from Amazon I bought a pack of two Sharpie Fine Point Pens that I really enjoyed writing with - for a week. Then the nib got pushed in and the fun was out of the pens. Maybe I have too much pressure on the pens, but I think they should last more than two weeks for daily writing!

So for now I’m going to keep writing with the Pilot Hi-techpoint pen because it works well for me. I recommend you to try it out. But as you know, the search goes on. For ever. The perfect pen is just around the corner and one day we might all just find our own Perfect Favorite Pen! :-)

Have you found your own best match yet, when it comes to pens and notebooks?

E is for Evidence.

An evidence page is a page in your Art Journal or notebook where you break out new stuff, like this washi tape, and use it for the first time. I did it when I bought deko tape too.

Trying out all the tapes in my Moleskine diary and writing about them.

Using your new materials is a way to keep them for yourself, as “evidence” that you once had them. When they are all used up and gone one day you can look back at the page and remember. I think it makes new material feel more “your own”, like a part of your stash, your stuff. You can try them out and see how they work on a page. Testing. Enjoying. Saving.

What I mostly wanted to know was if you could write on the washi tape and how transparent it is…

With my regular writing pen the washi tape is a bit too plastic to write on, but with a marker it will be easier. The transparency of the tape is nice, as you can see, and it is just what I was expecting. I think I will enjoy playing further with these tapes in all my books.

Here is another Evidence spread in my diary:

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“This basic yet classic Large Plain notebook” is one of my favorite notebooks to use as a written journal. I like the black cover because it is slick and simple, but this time I felt a need for a more colourful cover. I used some of my round stickers to alter it and make it my own! Now it looks like something I might have owned when I was ten, but I still like it even though I’m 30+ now. Some things never change, and stickers still rock!

I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot… and memory is important.
Judy Collins

When I first tried the moleskine notebook out I did not like to write on the silky pages, but I got used to it and now I love them! The 240 pages in a Moleskine are cream coloured, thin and smooth to write on.

I am always looking for blank pages (no lines) in a notebook, because I like the freedom it presents me with. It is too bad that there are so many cool notebooks that only come with lined papers if you ask me. When I was younger and I used a pencil and lined paper. Then at some point as a teenager I converted to ball point pen and blank pages. First I used a lined papers behind the notebook page as a guide, but these days I never bother with that practice. My lines are not always straight and the letters not always correct, but I just keep writing.

What are the most important thing when you get a new notebook? have you tried the Moleskine Plain Notebook yet? They are pricey but I like ‘em and they last a long time (3-4 months for me).

Smilla is the enjoying the beautiful weather! When it is too hot she prefers to stay indoors in the shadow though, under a table.

Each night she sleeps by my side in bed. And sometimes during the day we spend time there too. I sit and write and she chooses the most busy place of the bed to sit down on. If there are piles of papers she will lay on those.

If I’m not writing in my diary she will use it as her pillow. It looks so uncomfortable, but it’s her choice. I have no idea why she does this.

Celebrating that summer is here - with a new (from the stash) journal, a Moleskine this time. The pink owl journal is jam packed with words, many of them morning pages making my head a nicer place to carry around.

I use my diary as a calendar too, and in this one I’ve marked the beginning of a new month with a round tab, punched from wall paper. The idea for this comes from a photo found in flickr, if you look close at my spring inspirations you will be able to sport the source of my inspiration! I just thought it looked so neat, and it is!

I also scanned the last three diary collages:

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

I want to talk a bit about my first experience of having a Travel Journal, and how to use I used it on my trip. Maybe you will get some ideas for your next travel here. A Travel Journal for me is a journal specifically made for that particular trip. A Travel Journal is a journal that you bring with you when you travel somewhere. What you do in it is up to you, I used mine for writing and gluing down ephemera, postcards and tourist brochure information. You could use yours for sketching, lists, adding holiday photos or all of the above.

I have always documented all my trips with both photos and writing, but I have never brought a notebook dedicated especially to that trip. This Travel Journal is a new concept to me altogether, with its sewn pages and odd areas for writing in between decorative papers and themed images chosen to go with the “feel” of the trip!

It was a really cool experience having one, and I recommend that you try it out. I think I wrote extra much because of its look and feel. I just wanted to spend time with it. A diary always is a great company, but especially when away from home. Or as Oscar Wilde said:

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

I did not get to read as much in the novel I brought though (The Elegance of the Hedgehog) because I wrote instead, one can’t do it all. I finished that one book on the way home. A nice read I might add.

Check out previous posts Preparing a Travel Journal (Oh I was so inspired!) and Sewing Paper (the Travel Journal is evolving) that I did before leaving. This post is late because of the unplanned work with the Postcard Swap… Anyways.

Loose pages and freedom

I did not bring my diary (right now a magenta colored notebook), which felt a bit odd. Instead I brought a “travel journal”, but really just a bunch of loose pages sewn together decorated with magazine images, scrapbook papers, decorative tape, stickers and stamps… A yummy pile of papers to write on.

I decided not to bind all of it together before leaving, because I didn’t know how many pages I would need/use during the trip. I just didn’t want to leave a whole bunch of blank pages at the end of a bound book. If you do bind your book pre-trip you can add in photos or after-home-coming-thoughts at the end if there is room left. I quite liked having just the loose pages, carefully tucked in a protective plastic folder and carried around in my bag. I later created covers and bound it all together when I came back home, there will be more Travel Journal Posts! ;-)

One of the loose signatures.

Travel Journaling Kit

What to bring? You need to sit down for a while and think about what to bring on your trip. What do You think you will absolutely need? What would you miss terribly if you didn’t have it packed? Try to minimize but not be to cheap about the space in your bag. You will curse too much when you find out you didn’t even pack “that thing” you must have right then and there!

What you should bring depends on what you want to do in your journal, where you are traveling and in what way. Traveling by car or going camping makes it much easier to bring a big load of art materials to use or not to use. Airplanes have lots of stupid restrictions for brining too much stuff, or packing sharp scissors in your hand bag… Go figure!

I did not bring much material or stuff this time, as you can see. I knew I would not have time to sit and paint or create big collages etc. No time for “real juicy” art journaling play, and not enough interest to paint the scenery in watercolors either. I just know myself so I didn’t pack any paints or sketchbooks. For another trip maybe, but this time I went by plane. I was actually gone just one week (!), spent in the sun, with lots of sight seeing to do. I did bring a couple of pens, a roll of tape, a black stamp pad and date stamp, my beloved glue stick, scissors and some sticker labels I made in InDesign pre-travel. That’s it!

Important to remember

1. A travel journal should always be big enough for you to comfortably write in, but small enough so that you don’t feel it’s too heavy to carry around - everywhere! I brought mine to the beach, on excursions and to the restaurants where we ate. You never know when you will have some extra time to write.

2. Always carry with you two or three pens, you never know when the first one will run out of ink or when you’ll encounter a page with paper where ball point pen won’t write smoothly.

Using a Travel Journal

For me, writing is the most important thing, so I did add a lot of pages in that were almost white or very bare. This is what I like to do when I travel. Document everything. Just sit down and empty my head onto a page. I write down what I had for breakfast, where I’ve been, what I saw, what I ate for lunch, what I bought and how much it cost and how I feel about this and that etc.

My favorite pages to write were these white pages stamped with my Traci Bunker stamp “writing lines” in bright pink (new color pad that I adore). Yummy, and easy to fill with a stream of consciousness writing! I’ve had this stamp for a few years but never really tried it. A new kind of journal calls for new methods. Traci has lots of fun letter stamps, but I don’t think she keeps the “writing lines” right now.

In the evenings I sat in bed and cut out quotes and images from information leaflets and brochures about the resort. Business cards and postcards I bought were taped in so that I can flip them over and read both sides. For tickets and other ephemera I used the glue stick. The pre-made labels for excursions was fun to use and fill in too!

Color themed Travel Journal

A Color theme is a nice idea for a Travel Journal if you know where you are going when you create it. Desert, camels and sand was what I saw in my imagination, and the thoughts led to a yellow and brown theme with tints of orange. It was as I automatically picked those papers when putting the journal together.

There were a lot of sand - everywhere! I was right to chose my color theme to be “sand colors”. Sand on the beach, sand in the dessert, sand blowing around on the streets of our little town. Sand in my bag when I came home…

What do you bring when you travel? Where do you plan to go next?

Dear, dear diary, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you’re the only one that I know who’ll keep them
Dear, dear diary, I want to tell my secrets
I know you’ll keep them, and this is what I’ve done […]

I’ve been down every road you could go
I made some bad choices as you know
Seems I’ve got this whole world cradled in my hands
But its just like me not to understand…
/Pink

Scanned collage pages from my own Dear Diary where I write Morning Pages and Stupid Repeating Thoughts all the time. And glue stuff in. :-)

Pink and yellow goes great together, it just says spring to me.

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I’ve read Diana M. Raab’s soft cover poetry book a few evenings now. I think it’s hard to say anything about the poetry itself, because poetry is so personal and sometimes even mystifying. Reviewing it is difficult. I like some of the poems as they make me smile, others I don’t even understand and some I don’t like at all. What I do love most about this book, in addition to the beautiful cover, is the thought behind the book; the idea of writing poetry in your diary and/or writing a biography like this one using only poems! It’s awesome! As poetry is so personal I think journal poetry is a great idea.

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Let us fear but do it anyway
Let us do this today
Let us create something every day
And keep that fear at bay

Yay!

One empty hand.

Then a bunch of new pens bought for my Christmas check from work.

I got lots of yummy pens to use in my Art Journal, writing letters, diary pages and when I write daily poetry.

Playing with my photos again in Photoshop. This one is called “Hand it over”! Gimme looove!

It’s Love Week every week over here. Love yourself (try to!!!). Love your pens. Love new books! Love your camera. Make love to (in?) your art/heart… ;-)

Test page from my diary:

And another scanned page from my diary;

The poem is by Kim Mailhot of Queen of Arts blog, written as a comment to my post My blank books still haunt me… She calls it cheesy, but it’s fun and it’s encouraging - so it fits my blog, right? I wrote it down in my diary together with this fearsome tiger that I also adore. Isn’t he handsome. Grrr…

In 2008 I filled three whole journals with my almost daily writing; complaints, thoughts, plans, calendar drawings, questions, doodles and lists.

I think I do this because it’s habitual. I started as a kid and I just never stopped. It’s like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast, habits you keep doing even though you’ve forgotten who told you and why you do it.

I don’t write daily because I don’t have to. I’m in the habit of coming back. It can be a week or so between entries but after that I start missing writing and I come back to the page. I have no rules and that’s the way I like it. I do what ever I want, when ever I want, how ever I want. I do it because it grounds me. I think it’s out of diary keeping that my notebook love has grown. And I grow too, because my diary is my best friend…

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Let us not, you and I, be paralyzed by the sometimes madness of the world. Let us follow our writing and our being inward to that quiet place within ourselves and let us be centered there.
/Lynn Nelson

I’m putting up a couple of orange Notebook magnets that I’ve “designed” for my Etsy Shop. I love how they turned out!

A blog friend wrote a letter to me about blank books. She wrote:

My blank books still haunt me - I have no idea where to start! I wish you lived nearer! you could run workshops!
I want to use some of the Tolle stuff I am reading and bling it up a bit - but I am not confident and the pages look so nice and clean - what am I to do????

I think I’ve addressed the fear (that damn fear again) of the blank page before, but I’ve been thinking about it again recently.

I think the most important thing for me to keep creating and adding to a notebook, making it into what ever it is supposed to be (a scrapbook, a inspirational book of clippings, an art journal or diary) is to love it. That’s first. I need to love how it looks, how the paper feels, how the binding holds together and how the cover makes me feel. Not any notebook will do, but even if it feels wrong today, it might not be wrong tomorrow…

Because if I love it, I still need to wait for the right feeling to come. It can take weeks or years, but at one point I just know that the right time for this or that notebook has come. Perhaps I need to long a bit for it? When I crave adding stuff (words, text, images etc) into it, when I can’t resist it anymore - that’s when I know. Let’s talk, you and me dear notebook!

If you want advice on what to put into your notebook I can’t give it, of course. Or I can tell you that You Can Put Anything You Want into it! Wanting is key. You have to want to use it, feel it inside of you; is it writing you want to do? Or sketches? Poetry? Daily thankfulness? Or straight collages or layered collages and acrylic paint dabbing? Or writing all those to do-lists or jotting down ideas for future craft projects? Or all of that? With tabs as dividers perhaps…? With the right notebook you can do anything, but you’ve got to start using it.

Open it up and add something. Now.

But before that happy filling is the hesitation… right? And it is in the way of creativity! I want to shout moooove, but it’s sticky. You think Is what I do good enough for this pretty new shiny notebook? Fear of messing it up, as it is so pretty as it is, right? But if you make a page you don’t like, you can turn the page and start over. Nobody needs to know. Just keep turning the page!

Who taught us that “pretty as it is” is a true concept anyhow? I think it was someone with good intentions that told us this as we grew up. Someone who taught us to iron our clothes, clean our hands, eat up our food and shut up in class. To not only be pretty girls, but tidy, organized, neat and well behaved girls. At home, in kindergarten, in school. And where did that ever take us? Oh my how wrong it is to live by those rules. How terribly wrong it is. As a feminist I know it is intimidating to be “pretty” when one wants to be strong, bold and wildly crazy too. And I’m not just thinking of pretty neat blank notebooks now. I’m thinking about our lives. Our homes. Our desk. Our art. Our craft. Our female powers. They. Are. Not. Pretty. And. Tidy.

Who can create anything new in a neat and tidy environment? Maybe some of us need it to be clean and organized as you start out or finish for the day, but everyone makes a mess when they’re really “into it”. When they are being in the creative flow. The Creative Flow is that period of time where you forget about clock time. When your inner critic is forced to the side of the road with a muzzle over his mouth! That’s what Cameron’s Morning Pages is about, to keep writing for three pages each morning - without thinking! If you stop you might feel fear. Just keep going. The Artist’s Way Morning Pages is actually a great way to fill notebooks! Leah is having a group thing that sounds like fun soon. The theme for Everyday Creative in January was play and yes - in February it’s words! Why not pick up a notebook and start collecting words you like in it… If you want to play more in your life maybe Misty Mawn’s Art Journal prompts during January could help you getting started? I haven’t even read them yet, but one day soon I’ll just have one tab in Firefox open and read though them and look at Misty’s beautiful art!

The individual pages might stink, and if you’re letting your evil side (that self critiquing bastard) talk louder than happy you (your creative side) you will defiantly think so, but as a whole it is always beautiful. It’s beautiful and wild because it’s a part of you.

Anyway… Please check out my Notebook Junkie Magnets, I think they are yummy with the orange collaged background straight from one of my art journals!