My first big creative project of this year was to create a gratitude journal. I’ve been feeling a bit negative lately and I’ve found that when I’m feeling sorry for myself, it’s helpful to me to try to concentrate on some of the good things in my life — even the little tiny things — so that I can remember that in general things have worked out pretty well for me. My plan is to write down one thing every day that I’m grateful for. Some days I may write a few things down. Other days I might forget. No biggie.
I’ve tried keeping gratitude journals before on my phone and in basic little notebooks, but I didn’t find the process particularly fun ao this time I decided to make a cute, fun place to keep my notes. I raided my scrapbook stash and put together a smallish book (5×7 inches) filled with different papers. The design for my book was inspired by this journal by I Love It All on etsy. I liked how she combined full size pages with smaller bits and pieces and envelopes. It’s a look I love — very similar to the homemade smash book I made a couple of summers ago. If you can’t or don’t want to make a book like this yourself, I suggest that you pick up one of I Love It All’s adorable books.
Let’s take a closer look at the book I made:
I started out with an October Afternoon Here and Now book. The cover of the book was plain chipboard with a word cut out of it but whatever it said (I think it was “My Life”) didn’t really resonate with me, so I covered it over with a piece of wood grain paper, then added stickers to say “Grateful 2013”. The inside pages were comprised of a pack of October Afternoon 9 to 5 filler pages, some Farm Girl journaling blocks, and other bits and pieces from my stash. The album kit came with pre-punched holes and binder rings to hold it all together. So crazy simple.
I included several little envelopes like the paisley one up above that I made with one of my Paper Source envelope templates and then I slipped cards cut to fit inside of them.
I doodled some fancy numbers one side of this page and wrote my little thankful items next to them. The little insert with the photo is from a set of Snap Studios Snappy Sayings cards.
This is the same page with the insert flipped over. Hey, we all like pay day, right?
And here is another page with some smaller inserts. The one on the left has some washi tape slapped onto it. The rest of the book is pretty similar. I don’t know if I have the right number of pages to write something every day for a year, but the binder rings will make it easy to add or remove pages as needed.
How about you? Do you keep a gratitude journal? Have you managed to keep it up for more than a month?
