Journaling is a fun way to organize things, whether it’s to express your thoughts and feelings, or to arrange your daily schedule. You can also do an art journal that’s just for you to draw or collage a little for fun every day. There are so many varieties and styles of journals to get or make, you can really tailor a journaling notebook to your own aesthetic, whatever that is.
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Journaling basics.
The first thing to decide is what you’re trying to do with your journal. Is it going to be a creative outlet for yourself, or is it more of a to-do list that you want to use to help you stay organized? It could be a dream journal that lets you write down what you dreamed about first thing in the morning, or something that you do right before you go to bed to get all the daily thoughts out of your head and onto a page.
What type of journaling you want to do will determine what kind of notebook or sketchbook you’ll want to use. If you want to do sketches or collaging, you’ll probably want to use a notebook or sketchbook with blank pages. You could use a lined notebook if you don’t mind the lines on your drawings, but if you’re going to find that distracting you should go with unlined.
As far as designing the book itself, you could use colored pens or pencils, stickers, washi tape, sticky notes, or any other embellishments you want to add, if that’s something you’re interested in. If you want to keep it black and white, you could just use a regular gel pen or a set of black pens that come in different tip sizes.
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Art journaling.
Art journaling is a fun way to express yourself visually, but there’s one thing I would suggest if you decide to do that. That would be to keep the journal for yourself and to not show it to anyone else, just do it for yourself. I’m not saying that you should keep it a big secret, just don’t use it for getting feedback from other people.
Sometimes creative people want to get validation from people, but if they don’t respond super positively to your journaling, it will make you feel bad. If you’re journaling for yourself you can do whatever you want to without worrying about what other people think. And if there’s something that you make that you think should be developed into a bigger piece of artwork, you can do that in a different medium.
Take a sketch that you did in your art journal and develop it into a larger piece, but keep your journal for your eyes only with no expectation of praise from other people!
Journaling as a brain dump.
Writing things down in a diary-style journal can help to keep track of things that happened, and it can also help you to work through things that you’re going through. Everyone has things that bother them, and writing them down can help you to see them more objectively.
Set a timer and write non-stop for five minutes, longer if you need to. Once you’ve gotten it all out, walk away and come back the next day to read it. You might be surprised to see that reading it after some time will give you a different perspective on the situation.
And even if it doesn’t, the physical act of writing things down can help to work through situations that you might find complicated. Getting things out of your head and onto a piece of paper can help you to not worry about things so much.
Having said that, if you do have big problems that you need help with, don’t be afraid to find professional help! A journal can help, but it’s not going to fix every problem, and it’s important to take care of yourself.
Journaling for organization.
Sometimes journaling acts like as a to-do list more than anything else. Bullet journaling is a way of keeping track of things you need to do without having a specific schedule for them. It’s a useful way of organizing your day while still staying flexible about what time things need to get done.
You can organize these kinds of journals using colored pens and sticky notes to categorize things that you need to do, or leave them as a basic list-type journal. I’ve seen bullet journals that were covered with doodles, and some that were only lists of things to do and remember, so this kind of journaling can still fit your style aesthetic even if it’s not specifically for artwork.
Notebooks and journals to use.
What kind of notebook or journal you’re going to use will depend on what your style and goals are.
If you’re going to do a purely art-based journal, plain pages are a good idea. You can still write in them, but not having lines on the page will let you draw without anything interfering with your sketches. Whether you want the binding to be at the top of the page or on the side is up to you and how you want to use the pages.
Make sure that you’re getting an actual sketchbook that has pages designed to hold up to ink and wet media if you’re going to be doing a lot of color in them! Notebooks that are designed for writing won’t always hold up well to a lot of ink and the pages will bleed through or tear.
For writing, you can use whatever notebook you like, but if you want to use gel pens make sure that the pages are thick enough to keep them from bleeding through. That usually means skipping the super cheap notebooks from the dollar store and going with something that’s a little nicer.
That’s not bad advice regardless of what kind of pen you’re using…Unless you’re only writing with pencils or crayons, any kind of ink can bleed through pages, so don’t get the cheapo notebooks for something that you want to be a little nicer. And a personal journal should be a little treat for yourself, so make it nice.
A dot-grid page gives you the flexibility or writing with a guide so that things are straight but isn’t as rigid as a page with the lines on it. You can use this kind of page as a sketchbook or a list-making journal since it’s a nice in-between choice.
If you want to get really fancy, you can get a handmade junk journal
to write thoughts in, or you can make one yourself. Get junk journal supplies at The Scrapologist, and read this article about making your own paper ephemera that you can add to any journal.
You can also see some other cool notebooks that you can customize in this article: Notebooks and Journals for Stationery Lovers
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Pens and decorations.
Use a basic set of black pens if you want to keep your journal simple and monochromatic. This and other brands of micron pens come in sets with different tip sizes, so you can use them for writing and sketching. You can see micron pens here on Amazon. (#ad)
You can also use these to decorate envelopes for snail mail and pen pal letters. Click here to read more about supplies for those.
Gel pens are also good, I personally love the way that they write. You do have to test them out to see if they leave inkblots, which is something that can happen with this kind of pen. See Pilot gel pens on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/44Cf1hF (#ad)
Sharpies are good for thicker paper, but the more ink you put on the page, the more likely it is to bleed through, so watch out! You can see a bunch of color demos for these on my Amazon shop page, I went through this stack and did tests to see what the colors look like and to test whether they bled through the paper or not: Sharpie color tests on Amazon.
More ideas are pencils, crayons or other coloring media like chalk pastels, or collage materials that could be anything you can attach to the page! (Read about craft glue here)
A lot of people use scrapbooking stickers (get them here on Etsy) to dress up their journals, or washi tape to decorate the edges of the pages or the headlines on the pages.
For non-book gifts for people who love reading, click here.
Creativity-themed writing prompts.
Here are 30 writing prompts to get you started thinking about your own creativity and what makes you feel creative. I hope that these inspire you and give you some ideas for new projects. Try one a month and see what happens.
- What does “creativity” mean to you personally?
- Write about a time when you felt truly creative.
- Make a list of creative activities you loved as a child.
- Describe your ideal creative day.
- Write about something creative you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t yet.
- What is your biggest creative fear?
- List 10 small things that inspire you.
- What’s your favorite way to get into a creative flow?
- Write a letter to your creative self five years from now.
- If you had no fear of failure, what creative project would you start tomorrow?
- Describe a space that makes you feel creative.
- What creative habit would you like to develop?
- Write about a creative project you’re proud of.
- Describe a time when you felt creatively “stuck.”
- What’s one rule about creativity that you wish didn’t exist?
- Write about a person whose creativity inspires you.
- How does nature influence your creative thinking or work?
- Describe your creative “comfort zone.”
- If your creative life was a color, what color would it be today?
- How do you balance reading, watching, and scrolling with creating?
- Make a list of 20 things that make you curious right now.
- What is your relationship with perfectionism in your creative work?
- Describe your favorite creative tool or material in detail.
- If your creativity had a physical form, what would it look like?
- What creative project or goal would you pursue if time and money were unlimited?
- Write about the last time you surprised yourself creatively.
- How do collaboration and community play a role in your creativity?
- Describe your “creative season” right now—are you in a season of growth, rest, activity, or preparation?
- What do you want your creative legacy to be, personally or publicly?
- How has writing about creativity for 30 days shifted your perspective?