The Evolution of a Journal Keeper

I am a journal keeper, and have been for as long as I can remember, my first journal was a little fairy one with a padlock that my nanna gave to me one Christmas. Now I am an Art Journaller, and that' s how most of you who read my blog know me as, but before I got to where I am now....there was alot of journals that came before the arty art ones...

to help give you an idea of my journals, I did a couple of videos, showing you the pages of my older journals, that haven't really been seen on this blog before...

I kept my life between the pages of these now well worn journals, from cheap notebooks to leather journals, I wrote and wrote, filling pages with my life, an odd collage here, a stack of self portraits, some doodling, stickers and journal fodder...I never expected to expand my journal keeping into what I do now...so we all dont magically have amazing journals, we grow into them...we get better, more refined..with more doing..comes more learning.

I didn't care how pretty it looked, I didn't care what supplies I used, most the time it was a glue stick black pen and some coloured pencils..the occasional sticker and a folder of scrap paper.

If you haven't taken the steps to keeping a journal, and you want to..then just do it! there are no rules, you keep a journal for yourself, and only yourself.

I intend to keep a journal till the end of my days, I believe its made me a better person, and now I can say that it has definitely made me a better artist. I've traveled many steps with a journal in my bag, to far off places and home again, documenting, writing, drawing, photographing. Sometimes all you need is a black pen and a notebook..strip it down and just enjoy

there are more parts the the video's I just have to finish uploading them...I want the barrier between just starting, and being an 'old hand' at journalling to be broken down...we all started somewhere.

xx Courtney